Cities pay market price for food coming from the hinterlands but at the same time they pay a subsidy to the same hinterlands that grow that same food? Doesn't sound like market price anymore.
It's nonsensical to say that just because the tax receipts of a suburb doesn't pay in full its roads and bridges, its existence is necessarily subsidized by the rest. Does a city pay in full for its share of the US Navy whose protection of global commerce it depends on to survive? Are cities subsidized by the blood of those in the armed forces, who primarily come from the hinterlands?
> It's the hinterlands that are free riding on the US armed forces.
Yet.
"In every region of the country, recruitment rates were higher in rural and exurban counties than in urban counties. Only urban counties in the South had recruitment rates above the national average. Cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West all had rates well below the national average." [1]
It's nonsensical to say that just because the tax receipts of a suburb doesn't pay in full its roads and bridges, its existence is necessarily subsidized by the rest. Does a city pay in full for its share of the US Navy whose protection of global commerce it depends on to survive? Are cities subsidized by the blood of those in the armed forces, who primarily come from the hinterlands?