It's the part that flows through the feds that lets you get whatever answer you want - is a local bridge being 80% federal and state-funded the cities supporting the town? Or is that less than the income tax taken from the local town?
I agree and you’d have to do a lot of study and the answer is still probably it depends. Presumably nuking some distressed Midwest cities isn’t the answer, and a lot of these cities are somewhat spread out. But it’s hard to argue with they’re not bringing in tax revenue because in aggregate they’re pretty poor. Some luxury high rises to replace some of the many single-family homes is not going to help Detroit absent a big influx of jobs.