(This is an archived page, from the Patterns of Power Edition 3 book. Current versions are at book contents).
A centralised approach should enable geographic distribution of service provision to be optimised, to reap the benefits of scale where possible. It should also enable government spending and taxation revenue to be distributed more evenly, though imperfectly and bureaucratically:
Tax income is higher in wealthy areas – which would tend to have better than average services, such as education and policing, if they were financially autonomous. For greater equality between different areas of the country, tax receipts can be redistributed by bureaucrats – but the formulae they use can never perfectly respond to an area’s needs. In the example of the UK, this is briefly explained in the BBC article: What is the Barnett formula?