The mayor wants to build downtown. The school system wants up to $1 billion. The General Assembly is in session, and all-day kindergarten for more than $100 million a year is just the start of its plans. At times like these, government spending feels like water in my basement that's already at the top stair. And I've had to give up on finding somebody that actuallly wants to bail out the water. My choices these days are somebody who wants to add to it a cup at a time or somebody who wants to add to it a gallon at a time.
Comments
And to further add to your analogy Leo....We're rapidly running out of "higher ground"!
;)
B.G.
Some days, I just have to ignore it...for the sake of my blood pressure.
"At times like these, government spending feels like water in my basement that's already at the top stair."
Hell, it feels like the oceans inundating the whole continent when you consider what we're paying for our futile adventures in Iraq. A billion to remodel schools isn't even a drop in the bucket.
We want to live a civilized life
>Gotta pay for lights, heat, warmth, shelter,
>transportation, food, clothing, insurance,
>and all the extras
"That is the general assumption, but of course we actually don't HAVE TO pay for anything which is overpriced."
Well, I suppose this discussion reduces to a definition of "over-priced".
When I sit down to pay bills, I really must pay I&M (or AEP, if you insist); ditto for the mortgage company and City Utilities and NIPSCO. If I find those bills "over priced" I cannot reduce their rates; all we can do is shut off more lights and take shorter, colder showers, etc etc...
By way of saying, we must pay the due bills on essential services or else lose those services.
In the case of deciding that our I&M bill is "overpriced" and deciding we don't HAVE to pay it, nonpayment will - quite to the contrary of the idea of exercising "our power, above all CEOs and any other corporate power" - we risk ending up literally 'powerless'!
>and all the extras
The argument isn't that the schools need some maintenance. It's about wanting a billion dollars to do it and the astronomical price attached to it. I have yet to see a detailed list of what this money is for but students do not need air conditioning when there is maybe only 6 weeks of hot weather while school is in session. A new Science and tech center? No. These are things that students can have access to when they go to college. They say Wayne township/FWCS has the lowest tax rate than all of the other school districts. How is the income comparable to the other districts? Not the same. I have to question anyone who is willing to just pay for anything goes-and that is what FWCS is counting on. No one was held accountable for the disrepair to begin with and now they want to do it all at once. Raise property tax, get some riverboat gambling etc to pay for it. Property owners have had enough.
"Civilization must be paid for" is not an answer to "the government is taking too much of my money." We can all agree, I suspect, that there can be such a thing as too little government, resulting in "nasty, brutish lives" if not downright anarchy. We can have too much government, resulting in state control of everything. Do any of you really think we are closer to the "too little government" end of the spectrum? When there is too much, it's time to debate what to get rid of, not just justify everything already done.