This Could Ease Your Tax Resentment

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Almost all the conservatives I know (Libertarians, and former Republicans) have their anger about paying taxes as their central gripe.  In other words, almost all conservatives are fiscal conservatives, and they encourage each other with various tropes (I'm not absolutely sure what that means, but I believe that they're common misconceptions), such as ... OK, I deleted that, so as not to set off my easily distractible readers.

You rarely learn about the resources the various levels of government provide unless --and until-- you work in the public sector, or you have a wife who works in the public sector.  So here's a brief crib sheet for all of you.  My wife (shh, don't tell anyone) is the grants manager of a rural county, and so she is more familiar with federal grants that may be applied for by deserving municipalities, to help them with their numerous projects. This list will be heavy on things that help the poor.  Keep track of how many of these things a wealthy citizen could do by himself, or with the cooperation of like-minded fat cats!  Not many, you will find.

One thing poor municipalities need help with are roads, bridges, water and sewage.  These are probably the sorts of projects that even Rush Limbaugh would agree has to be done communally; no one is going to take care of their own sewage, except to link it to a public system that has been paid for with . . . what?  Taxes.  (If we did not pay taxes, we would have to send our sewage directly into the closest stream, rather than delay it by a few decades.  I can see even now some libertarians indignantly protesting that of course they would pay some taxes.)

Waste management is an important social responsibility.  Not everyone can afford a private landfill on their property; the local government has no alternative to using public lands for this purpose, and managing it as carefully as they can afford to.  This is often a bone of contention with many conservatives.  They would prefer that the waste facility should be located as far from their homes as possible, in which case they would also prefer that the least amount of public finances should be spent on them.  This is where Libertarians really have no fair answer to the problem: should the waste facility be located closest to the citizens least able to protest?  Another approach is to give it to some private business to handle, and in order to make money, they would do a good job of it!  But monopolies are dangerous, and that would seem to be a major point against such a solution.  So it falls to the government.

Every municipality has building codes, and zoning ordinances.  Conservatives are generally opposed to these sorts of restrictions--for themselves.  However, they're usually in favor of some sorts of controls over the crap that people on the wrong side of the tracks are allowed to put on their lots, especially if the said lots are visible from the roads that they travel on.  But enlightened conservatives are generally agreed that zoning is a good thing, even if particular ordinances might not really result in the environment they would prefer to have.  It is the municipality: the county, city or state that pays for the labor and the time of those who design the zoning ordinances, and those who enforce them.  There are rules about how a property may be divided up, to prevent a neighborhood from degenerating into a mass of fences separating miniscule* lots.  In which neighborhoods commercial development is allowed, and so on.

A major concern is emergency shelter.  Women fleeing spousal abuse, sometimes with their children, need both temporary shelter, and possibly long-term housing.  People being released from prison need shelter, and an address to give if seeking employment (and of course, we're rooting for them to find a job, and nobody wants to rent to them, and they're sometimes not welcome at home).  Elderly folk whose former employment was not sufficient to provide a home in their advanced old age need shelter, or housing assistance.  It could happen to anyone.

Drug addiction rehabilitation is now becoming an issue with so-called bipartisan support.  It is gradually emerging that addiction to Heroin can only be treated by prescribing precisely controlled doses of another related drug, which is only chemically addictive (but not psychologically addictive), and reducing the dose incredibly gradually.  For some patients, the expected treatment time is close to three years, during which the patient has to be constantly steered away from either total despair, or sometimes overconfidence, with demands to step up the rate of reduction, a bad step that invariably leads to relapse.

The legal system, in the case of the weaker members of society: women, children, and the elderly, must work in tandem with social services.  Restraint orders, parole, child abuse, foster care, all require full-time staff, who must be paid, supervised, and evaluated.  It is difficult to imagine the attitudes of moderate conservatives to these issues; some would like these problems to be handled by religious organizations, which I think is completely inappropriate, and would ultimately lead to proselytization of a particularly unhappy sort.  Others would blame the problem on general social malaise, claiming that the welfare state encourages the need for these services.  When affluent families unexpectedly find their members in need of these services, they're embarrassed, and keep it quiet.

Emergency Services need an enormous amount of coordinating.  Every year, new technology enables more efficient approaches to firefighting, emergency medical services, so that upgrading facilities and equipment is a major expense for each county.

Many of these projects are funded by Federal grants.  The grants are sent out through the State governments, which demand an opportunity to influence the flow of Federal money, after which they trickle down to the county level, after which the county assesses which of the numerous proposals they have received deserves funding.  Once the applications are written, they are sent back along the tube, to the state, and then to the Federal agency.  If a grant is approved, the state representative for the county usually rushes to announce the award, and to take credit!  (It is particularly embarrassing if the representative concerned is a fiscal conservative, and is opposed to paying for such projects with tax money in the first place.)

One of the problems with older cities is the proliferation of unsightly electrical lines along streets.  Relocating cables underground is usually effected by a partnership between private individuals and businesses, and city and county governments.  In principle, there is nothing to prevent private individuals from forming a consortium to negotiate with the utility companies to undertake the move, but one would expect that the County has a little more ability to negotiate a lower price for the project that a consortium of individuals would have.  The county would also have the resources to supervise the design of the project from the point of view of safety, and future planning.

Finally, planning is something the county does on behalf of numerous constituencies.  Water supply, schools and education, waste management, security, arts and entertainment, traffic management, rivers and pollution management, flood planning, geological survey, emergency management and evacuation plans.

Numerous other esoteric--in the sense of being far removed from public consciousness-- initiatives fall into the lap of county and local governments.  When money is tight, some of the most important initiatives are put on hold, because they are so far from the public eye that they are the ones least likely to be protested, and to have the least impact on the elected officials who must decide how to allocate the reduced funds.  This is fine, unless an unexpected emergency takes place, which would usually result in the officials losing their seats, and new, completely inexperienced replacements being elected in their place.  It is a tricky world in which we live.

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*Yes, I looked up the spelling.