Devolving spending may help solve regional inequalities. Or it may not.
1. the local income per head problem is a microchosm of the national income per head problem! Highly intractable and not nearly as amenable to policy as some of your swashbuckling dirigiste columnists would have you believe, as though growth miracles were to be had everywhere.
2. finding and driving through policies that work requires a political elite that a) accepts reason and evidence and understands that b) its electorate does reason and evidence too. Why is this magically going to appear at the local level if it is painfully absent nationally?
[Not everything is about Brexit, but if you can get an unprecedented raising of trade barriers with your largest partner through, this does not bode well for the chances of an evidenced based and reasoned debate on regional inequality.]
3. Regions don't have incentives to worry about the effects of their choices on other regions. That's what national governments are for. Devolving spending and control and accountability may bring benefits but will aggravate this cost.
4. I think the mechanisms to brace against cronyism and corruption are weaker, the further down the devolution chain you go.
5. The devolution we are talking about is *not* devolving taxes AND spending; it's raising taxes nationally, but devolving spending and the control of it. This creates a version of the taxation without representation problem.
6. Not to say devolution is all bad. The main insight is: local people know their areas' problems better than you do in the centre, and face incentives to deliver for locals that they are accountable to, in a way that you in the centre may not [if said area not a marginal].
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