Using The Wire to explain horizontal fiscal equalisation

In The Wire and horizontal fiscal equalisation Matt Cowgill uses examples from the HBO series The Wire to explain why we have and need horizontal fiscal equalisation:

It’s this sort of ruthless indifference to poorer areas that underpins the American approach, illustrated so vividly on the Wire. I’m not claiming that a recalibrated Commonwealth Grants Commission funding formula would lead us to a situation like Simon’s Baltimore, but I am suggesting that any deviation from the principle of citizens’ equal entitlement to government services would be a disastrous and repugnant step, however tentative, in that direction.