Seems like we've got two strands of outrage going on simultaneously: taxpayers, particularly business owners, complaining about how much city waste there is; and others complaining that the city is not doing enough to get services to the poor. Maybe the fact that there's outrage from both sides reveals an attempt to find a middle path.
One issue that we should tease out from the outrage is how much of what people see as waste is actually money that could be used for some other purpose. Dan is outraged by the car-sharing experiment. But does the money going into this project take away from something else? Or does it come from some special source, that either doesn't cost city $$$ or radically leverages city $$$ with outside $$$. In the latter case, even if it costs city dollars, it may be a net win (even if you don't like it), because the net inflow gets spent here. And some of the issue is that we have to combine our concerns with those of others. Dan's angry because of the libraries, which he doesn't use, because he buys books. I hardly ever drive, so I could be seething about the money we pay to take care of the roads. And everyone who no longer has kids in school should object to that... If you take this to its logical conclusion, we should all go off and live in the outback and do everything for ourselves. What's the criterion for distinguishing between a reasonable public expenditure and an unreasonable one? My guess is that most of us think schools and libraries are ok. Not that I'm unsympathetic to Dan --- I'm appalled by the rise in my property taxes. But a lot of it is a shift in columns, as far as I can tell. The state's cut my taxes, and stopped giving money to the city, so the city raises my taxes. As for services for the poor (particularly housing), this seems like a tough tightrope to walk. The problem is that the suburbs and exurbs are already dumping their social problems into the cities for us to pay for. If we invite more and more of this, we could find ourselves just ending up as a new Detroit --- another island of poverty in the middle of a sea of affluence. That's not even good for the poor; as the tax base goes down the services get worse and worse. There's no easy solution to this --- certainly not outrage at the city's attempt to draw in more affluent taxpayers. It's perfectly rational to concentrate services in the cities, where they can be more effectively delivered (would you really want to try to replicate HCMC up at Lake of the Woods?). The problem is that our governmental system (despite the laudable idea of the Metropolitan Council), doesn't take this into account, and throughout the country the suburbs and exurbs have been on the rise, while the cities are saddled with a combination of increasing social burdens and collapsing revenue. -- Robert P. Goldman ECCO [EMAIL PROTECTED] REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
