State and local government

0:00- [Narrator] So let's talk a little bit about the different layers of government in the United States, and I'll first talk about these first three layers right over here, your local, state, and national, and then I'll touch on these tribal and international as well.

0:14So in the United States, when we're thinking about national, it's things that deal with the whole country. And it could be foreign policy, it could be, for the most part, the military, things like federal taxes. There's also a whole series of federal laws. Now, when you get to the state level, what's interesting is that the state really replicates a lot of the institutions that you might see at the federal level.

0:38And when I say federal, I'm referring to national. But at the state level, just as you have a national Congress, you have the House of Representatives and you have the Senate, you also have those analogs at the state level. Usually you have a state Senate and a State House, sometimes it's called a state assembly, and they make state level laws that only apply to that state.

1:00Now, the executive at the national level, or the federal level is the president of the United States. The executive at the state level is the governor. And it's not just the governor who's the executive, but there's a whole bureaucracy, a whole group of people reporting into the governor that execute, or carry out the laws that the legislative branch passes.

1:21And once again, this is analogous to what happens at the federal level. And then, just like we have federal courts that roll up into the US Supreme Court, you also have state courts that roll up into the state Supreme Court. Now, what type of things does the state normally cover?

1:37Education is definitely part of it. They might talk about high level budgeting. If the federal government gives the state money, then the state might decide how to allocate that to the local jurisdictions, and we'll talk more about that in a second. But actually, most of the education policy in most of the US is actually happening at the local level, which we'll talk about in a second, through things like the city or the school district.

2:02But transportation, this actually happens at all three levels. You have interstate, national infrastructure transportation, you have state highways, but you also have local roads. Public health is a big place where the state operates. It might think about, it's actually administering a lot of the public health benefits.

2:20Some of that happens at the local level with, say, the county hospital, et cetera. But it also tends to regulate things like insurance in that state. Criminal justice, that happens at all levels, federal level, state level, but the state definitely plays a big role.

2:35And then the state has to figure out how it's going to get money to pay for the things it does. Many states have state income taxes, just like the federal government does. The states, and they oftentimes will have sales taxes as well. Some of the states don't have income tax, and they're going to rely more on things like other forms of taxes.

2:55Now let's zoom in now to the local government. This is something that, if you're walking around your town, you might actually see some of these buildings. You're experiencing maybe even more directly a lot of what your local government provides. Anytime you go to a park, a library, you're on your local roads, the elections, the school you go to, if it's a public school, is likely administered locally, either by a school district, city, county, some type of school infrastructure right over there.

3:23So that's where you are going to interface most of the time, although you might interface with some of the state, state bureaucracy or some things at a national level. Now, I'll go back a little bit to tribal, because we also talk about that as a form of local government, and that's also a layer here.

3:42And in the United States, for Native Americans, you will have sovereign nations that govern their communities. That's why you might see, for example, in some states, the state might not allow things like casinos, but the tribal nations might say, "Hey, that might be a good source of revenue to support our schools," or something like that, "and we have some sovereignty here.

4:03We can decide what we want to do irrespective." Even if where we are, the tribal nation, the sovereign nation is surrounded by a state, they can make many of their own laws and govern it accordingly. And then the last layer here is international, and we could think about things like the United Nations, or we could think about NATO, and that's trying to coordinate nations together, national levels together to coordinate in different ways.

4:32But people can have a debate about how much power they actually have if a nation really wants to do something that is different. If a state wants to do something very different than what the national government wants, that's usually a little bit difficult. But if a national government wants to do something different than an international group wants to do, they usually just go around, they figure out some way to do it.

4:54Now, anyone listening to this of any age can participate in many ways. If you're over 18, obviously the most direct way of participating is actually voting. But even if you are under 18 and you're not old enough to vote yet, you can get very involved. First of all, you can definitely influence the adults around you.

5:12You could research issues. You can tell them your opinion about issues that matter to you. So that would fall under sharing your ideas and speaking up. You can join clubs and have joint action for things. You can get petitions. You can use social media to get the word out about issues you care about.

5:29You can obviously volunteer in your community, and then once you turn 18, of course, you can and should vote.