As further anecdotal evidence that local dispersal of funds is a good thing, my mother recently commented that most of the improvements in quality of life in rural Spain come from the Autonomous Communities, not from the Central Government. The mountain village where she was born (which had 200 people back then and is smaller now) now has weekly garbage collection from the local authority (concejo) as a result of regional policies funded with Spanish and EU funds. This is not trivial as the council covers a largish area

and the total population is under 3,000 people and the council site is a village of only 500 people.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith