For now, I’ll be content not to sacrifice my liberty. Putting it in the hands of collectivist mentalists seems counter productive.

The main culprits, in my opinion are:

16th Amendment (1913; The Income Tax): This concentrated spending power in Washington. Congress regularly uses its spending prowess to coerce uniformity among the States. (i.e., “Do it our way or we cut off all your highway funds.”). The Courts have never enforced any rational connection between the requirement and the funds withheld. This is why we have national speed limits and drinking ages.

17th Amendment (1913; Direct Election of Senators): Before this Amendment, the Senate worked for the State governments, and were a check on Federal power. Senators are no longer answerable to State governments, and voters are usually insensitive to this issue. The Federal legislature (Congress) now is unchecked by the States and has all the money it needs.

FDR’s creation of the Administrative State and the Judiciary’s (forced by FDR) expansion of the Commerce Clause. Mentioned above. Terrible. This is why we have national drug and labor laws, even when localities wish to innovate in the regulation of local matters.

However, I don’t know how related these are to “today’s events” (if by which you mean the housing bubble and the effects of its slow deflation). We have a national currency in the USA, and its regulation has been given to the Federal Government since Day 1. This only makes sense (you can’t have 50 regulators of one currency). Most of today’s events (certainly the run-up since 2001) were driven by macro economic events that are naturally regulated at the Federal (and global) levels. Returning to the Federal Govt of 1875 would have little effect on them I think.

This may be a bit counter intuitive, but I think housing prices are primarily inflated over the last 20 years because of the national teacher’s unions and the government monopoly on education. I can’t find the link right now, but it should be common sense to anyone reading this blog that there is a HUGE correlation between the price of a home and the quality of the local school district. The fact is that people want to pay for better education for their kids, but the government’s monopoly on providing it means that you can’t. So instead home prices are bid up where schools are good. It’s a messy way to pay for that kind of thing.