A friend of mine complained the other day on Facebook (in a joking context, but knowing his politics he was semi-serious) about not getting anything for his rates (city taxes).
This is an otherwise highly intelligent man who drives every day on roads that are not flooded, not full of potholes, and not wandered by stray dogs, leading past buildings that are earthquake-safe, food businesses that won’t give him food poisoning, well-stocked libraries, well-kept parks, clean public toilets, thousands of street trees, and well-used community centres, to give a non-exhaustive list of what he gets for his rates.
The thing is, unless you’ve worked in among that infrastructure, as I have, it tends to be invisible. Nobody thinks about stormwater until it’s flooding their house – nobody, that is, except the stormwater engineers whose daily job is to stop it from flooding your house.
This article reminds us of that.
The thing is there are taxes then there are Taxes. And we don’t always get the bang for the buck with taxes. We know that here in Calif with the highways. Not mention that some of those things you listed have been paid for with private funds.
Not in my city.