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[soco]

Yesterday, the NYTimes published an article about SW Oregon and the mentality of reducing taxes because government is too bloated. In the case they focus the most on, it's a specific tax levied as a property tax to support the local libraries. However, they give other examples like a jail being defunded. Part of this is the long-running narrative by many conservatives, that government is too bloated or that it's incompetent (presumably not the conservatives making the claim).

But last fall, Douglas County residents voted down a ballot measure that would have added about $6 a month to the tax bill on a median-priced home and saved the libraries from a funding crisis. So this spring, it has been lights out, one by one, for the system’s 11 branches. The Roseburg central library here is the last to go.

...

Just east of Curry in Josephine County, the jail has been defunded after nine consecutive defeats of public safety tax levies — there will be another try next week in a special election — leading to a policy of catch-and-release for nonviolent criminals.

...

Counties that draw a line on taxes are also unlikely to get bailed out by state governments, including Oregon’s, which are facing budget stresses and tax-resistance movements of their own. Revenue came in less than budgeted in 25 states last year, the most since the Great Recession, according to a report by the National Association of State Budget Officers. Louisiana and Wyoming have laid off workers. Alaska has slashed funding for education. Here in Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, ordered a hiring freeze last month as the state wrestles with a $1.6 billion shortfall.

So what does life in government retreat look like?

It looks like the house on Hubbard Creek Road in Curry County, where owners went for more than 10 years without paying any property taxes at all because the county assessor’s office couldn’t field enough workers to go out and inspect. The house, nestled in the woods with a tidy blue roof and skylights, dodged more than $8,500 in property taxes that would have gone to support the schools, fire district and sheriff, because government had gotten too small to even ask. So things fall even further, with cuts to agencies that actually bring in revenue prompting further cuts down the line.

So this set of natural experiments raises a lot of questions.

• What services could you do without?
• What would the long term effects of those be?
• Who responds when a disaster happens?
• Do you need to pay a group of people who develop contingencies plans for disasters?
• How important are public services to the great America our forefathers have built?
• Is there some distant point in the future where we've defunded education so much, that the average immigrant is smarter than the average American?

 

[Quixzlizx]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1373637&highlight=all+services+will+cease

 

[numble]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1373637&highlight=all+services+will+cease

Although the thread starts out from the same article, the OP is asking different questions and seems to want to have a different conversation.

 

[soco]

Ooops. Search failed. lock away!

 

[n00bsauce87]

I'm surprised Kansas (as a state) hasn't pitched this to their constituents.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

How important are public services to the great America our forefathers have built?

Man, I think the founding fathers would have been amazed at the amount of solidarity in theory that can be found in these services. Heck, on the disaster thing, they would've been amazed that the country got to the point of being able to respond to emergencies that quickly and efficiently.

But before that, there'd be one hell of a culture shock.

 

[Hickbilly Deluxe]

Anecdotal situation, but the city I live in has had 4 special elections in the past two years trying to raise taxes to build a new middle school and expand another one. This was after they sold two other schools that were just as large to private interests who renovated them and are using them as a Catholic school and anew apartment building. Every vote failed.

The city wants 30 million for everything. All the renovations to the schools they sold cost around 2 million. Sometimes people vote no on new taxes when it's obvious the people in charge are idiots with money.

 

[LastGamer84]

Anecdotal situation, but the city I live in has had 4 special elections in the past two years trying to raise taxes to build a new middle school and expand another one. This was after they sold two other schools that were just as large to private interests who renovated them and are using them as a Catholic school and anew apartment building. Every vote failed.

The city wants 30 million for everything. All the renovations to the schools they sold cost around 2 million. Sometimes people vote no on new taxes when it's obvious the people in charge are idiots with money.

This happened in my hometown before I moved away. The school board and local officials wanted to build a new school, so they allowed the middle school buildings to deteriorate to the point they could claim renovations would be too expensive.

Unfortunately for them, this half-assed idea was concocted during the recession- so now they were out an entire middle school with no way to fund a new one. They ended up adding on to the grade school and cramming grades 1-8 in one building. The middle school is now abandoned, and no one will ever buy it for the asking price they want because tearing it down would cost more than it's worth.

 

[jWILL253]

People want all the services, but don't want to pay for it, and hate when people they don't like (read: people of color) get to use those services, too. So they either vote Republican, or they vote to shut down state or federal revenue streams. Then they get mad when the services they've depended on no longer functions at past levels, or gets cut entirely.

The biggest American lie: cutting taxes & services that people depend on somehow betters your life.

 

[Sunster]

those "bloated" government services are what allow us to live comfortably and safely. why is this most basic fact so difficult to understand?