I was a member of my town’s finance committee for about 6 years. I’m in my late 30s, 3 kids, wife, mortgage. I was the youngest member, the average age probably being mid-60s, and some members in the 80s (2/13?).
I resigned this last year. At our last town meeting, I spoke about this exact point, because it’s been completely lost / brainwashed out of the older generation. The majority of them say something like this:
I ran a business for many years. The government should be run like a business.
This is about as brain dead as it gets for this simple reason: the (local) government is not intended to make a profit (within the US). Every year, we know the town needs to produce a BALANCED budget, meaning no profit because you’re using the funds for services. Every dollar has to be appropriated to some funding.
In other words, there is no profit. It’s just services. The goal is high quality services that benefit the community, delivered on a predictable cadence. If we wanted to make a profit, we could make blind bag kids toys, low grade video entertainment, push TikTok shopping trends. We could make the services cost subscription fees on top of the product. We could make schemes & grifts, bullshit no one actually wants.
I want nice services for my quality of life. Over my time, we met with people every year for the budget, we’d hear about how hard they are working, how thin they are running, and now services being cut. This isn’t some federal government taking our money. This isn’t some state government taking our money. It’s money that goes directly back into where & how we live.
For 6 years, we talked like raising taxes was an impossibility when the majority of the funding comes from the local property tax, more-so commercial than residential. Even then, the committee kept making it sound like it will never work.
These people are absolutely brainwashed from years of Fox and bad faith actors. They only understand things in terms of profit. When encountering a situation where profit CANNOT LEGALLY happen, they STILL cling to it, and rather suggest we have too many teachers, or we don’t really need that benefit. They wanted to cut funding to board of public works, we had a snow storm, and next week, everyone wants to know the state of our equipment & whether BPW should have more money.
I couldn’t do another year of the collective amnesia with these people. We need more young people who give a shit in these rooms debating these geriatrics & reminding them about civics, but I’ve served my time for now.
Yeah, want decent tax funded services like schools and libraries
This unfortunately, Fox News and other right wing chudservative propaganda and it’s consequences is a disaster for human civilization
You’ve brought a great perspective here. That must’ve been so frustrating. So this is what we’re dealing with, huh?
I think the hard part for me was hearing about these people being lifelong members of our town, their kids went through the school system, and now they just want to defund it or don’t see the value.
Our town had #1 school performance & student/teacher satisfaction for the surrounding 20 towns. #1 in test scores.
18th in pay.
We’re going to lose teachers. We’re going to lose student appeal. We’re going to lose a valuable service that draws new families to the town. But, because some people already benefitted and believe they don’t any longer (even though that’s completely false), they rather lose quality than take on what amounts to $13/mon in property tax added… people were suggesting we raise our trash fees rather than raise the taxes, and the trash fees resulted in a higher increased cost of living than the tax increase.
They just don’t get it. They don’t see government as virtuous. I think they really see it as “core services only” and then tend to be “core services that I need.”
From my perspective, they are being selfish. I called people out and said how they vote, where they put their money, matters so much more than words. A lot of people would say they care about first responders, and at the same time, shame their budgets when they came before us. We have degrading buildings, which are hurting the livelihoods of these people. Mold & water damage issues, not secure evidence holdings. We’ve been talking about a new public safety complex, and all these “independents” and conservatives didn’t want to put their skin in to help these people. Our fire fighters don’t have good decontamination areas, so they are more liable to get cancer.
Oh, but your “bottom line” being impacted by $13/mon is too much?
I swear, they acted more like immature children than me. It was depressing. I was there defensively because my vote really impacted the board’s decisions as a group. I have friends in the wing, so I can take a break with some peace of mind. I also expect many of these people to die eventually, which I don’t say in malice, but some of these worst board members were the oldest.
I don’t know if it’s the case specifically where you were, but a lot of anti-government-services has a bedrock of racism. They don’t want the government to do things because then those people will benefit, and they don’t deserve it because they’re stereotype
“Dying of Whiteness” was a really depressing read.
No, this is what you’re being destroyed by. Nobody’s dealing with it.
Thanks for doing that for the community. This issue is a feedback loop… most of the people likely to join committees like this are retirees with time on their hands - eg, the Fox News crowd and those most statistically likely to vote Republican… Who vote to decrease services… Which leads to younger generations having more financial pressures put on them to pay for services, making them time poor… Which leads to most of the people likely to join committees…
Historically, taxes were invented to feed the army. A leader didn’t need taxes to pay for things. They could just point at local blacksmith and demand a new spear. But to sustain an army you need a lot of food. The answer is to give soldiers money to buy stuff and demand the money back from the population.
These days a lot depends on what kind of society you have. An extractive society has a strongman as leader and everybody is involved in digging stuff out of the ground. Not much is giving back to society as everybody is just a replaceable pair of hands.
Societies where people’s mind is your resource because you design and make stuff, the situation is different. For people to do their more complex work you need education, healthcare, nice neighborhoods.
How taxes are used reflects on where you’re going as a society.
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I mean… that was its original purpose. Sure it can be used for other things but systems often revert to the purpose they were designed for.
People often forget that kingdoms and fiefdoms and empires and military states are types of governments. And they suck to live in. People got so comfortable and distanced from our ancestors fighting against those forms of governments that they’re unknowingly and some knowingly fighting to return to them. You want a strong daddy type to crush his political enemies, to raid the coffers because he can and has complete control over the political bodies, judicial system, institutions, and people? Congrats, you now have a mad king, the kind your ancestors defeated because it was so oppressive and deadly to live under.
donny dumpster fire doesnt want there to be a government at all. If there was a real government or justice system, he’d be in jail. And I think thats really his goal, fully destroy the entire system to ensure he will never be prosecuted after all this is over…
The role of the capitalist state has always been to protect the rich first, and then itself. Supporting the community is only done insofar as doing it would support the first two objectives (for example by preventing people from rising up against the rich)
The community this guy wants to support with government money is rather small. It is basically limited to one family.
The trouble that I get myself into is that I laugh at stuff like this but then realize people are being serious.
Wait, you mean free money is not the way to get rich and feed superiority compex? (c, any official asshole throughout entire human history)
For these grifters, the point of having a government is to legally funnel funds into their pockets which would otherwise be illegal.
I am fucking begging you all to understand that governments come into being because violent men do violent things until they gained a monopoly on violence. They don’t exist to serve the people. Governments enforce the will of the powerful through violence and the threat of violence. If you don’t control the government, you are subject to having violence sued against you for disobeying the orders of that government. Taxation is institutionalized banditry.
Oh hell, you sound indistinguishable from me when I was an insufferable 21 year old. Now I’m embarrassed for both of us.
