It depends on how much socialism is required to promote the general welfare. The point is that the interstate public sector would be creating jobs by building infrastructure.

Yes, but any power the interstate public sector has could be nullified, correct? No matter what the interstate level does, the states are not coerced to comply, right? If this is true, the states would be able to do anything they wanted regardless of the interstate level's wishes.

This is because Europe was more completely industrialized long before the United States were. If the United States dropped slavery voluntarily, it probably wouldn't have happened until the begining of the 20th Century at the earliest. Not to mention segragtion would probably still be the law of the land in parts of the country, had federal law not prohibited it.

What is the government's obligation to its people, though, in your opinion?

This is the approach that post-war Japan took, worked fairly well for a long time, but there are some serious economic problems they are going to have to overcome in the near future. Creating infrastructure isn't a great way to build a sustainable economy, because eventually you have nothing left to create. How much socialism do you think a government is justified in using?

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Yes, the little green fist up there is a symbol of Earth First! No, I'm not an eco-terrorist, nor do I agree with eco-terrorism...I just thought it looked cool.