One of the most galling aspects of government is that the people who engage in reckless spending and make irresponsible decisions are never held accountable. Instead, the citizens are. By their nature, governments cannot go broke. Instead, they simply go on. And on.
Harrisburg is perfect example. And unless voters wake up en masse, what happened in Harrisburg will be America’s nightmare future.
The city of Harrisburg is Ground Zero for America’s municipal debt crisis.
Pennsylvania’s capital city has liabilities estimated at $610 million, which is nearly 10 times its annual budget. The city is so deep in the red that last year it attempted to file for bankruptcy. Reckless spending did more than ruin Harrisburg’s balance sheet; it crowded out private industry and distracted from the city’s core functions. Today, Harrisburg is a dangerous, poverty-stricken city, with failing schools and a shrinking population.
Harrisburg’s fiscal nightmare may be a harbinger of things to come for American cities….
Read it in all its appalling detail. Politicians come and go, and each clique does little more than keep adding to the debt in order to be reelected.
In these situations, the more responsible citizens (those who have the most to lose) simply move out of the city to nearby suburban communities. This pattern is condemned as “sprawl” by the very people who made it happen. The government that makes life in your city so unendurable that you have to leave then turns right around and condemns you for leaving. I have often wondered why the people who claim to hate “sprawl” do so much to fuel it. And instead of implementing responsible policies that might make people want to stay in the urban hellholes they have created, they act as if they have some God-given right to keep people there, wage war against their cars (and even their air-conditioning), make them go outside and walk or ride bicycles, make them live in denser housing, make them use public transportation, and by stopping “sprawl,” prevent new communities from being built. They claim that implementing such policies will bring about a better world, and meanwhile they spend more and more of other people’s money, while being accountable to no one.
Supporters of smart growth argue that people would really prefer to live in high-density cities.
Who wants to be ruled by people who not only claim to know what you would really prefer, but who use your money to pay for it?
I’d rather pursue my own happiness than someone else’s opinion of what it should be.
Does that make me selfish?
Comments
2 responses to “What people really prefer….”
Cities all over are going broke from way too generous pensions, forcing them to cut services like public libraries that are probably public goods – or at least way more legitimate of government functions than the pensions that are crowding them out. St. Louis’s generally left-leaning newspaper has been doing some scathing reporting the last couple weeks about our firefighters – 48% of them retire “disabled” which gives them even more tax-free auto-increasing pension then they would otherwise. The Post-Dispatch has been detailing how many of them are collecting these “disabled” pensions while working second careers or enjoying very active hobbies.
[…] cities are going broke even faster. Reason is talking about the extreme case of Harrisburg, PA (h/t Classical Values), whose dictatorial mayor squandered funds buying hotels and sports teams. But many more cities are […]