3 ms·

Without reading it, is it because in the U.S. no-one wants to pay tax?

• quotemstr 9y ago
  I'd call it a loss of the ability to pull together for the common good, part of the continued fracturing of western society into individual-sized pieces.
  • ciconia 9y ago
    > part of the continued fracturing of western society into individual-sized pieces. For the US, yes. For (some) European countries, not so. There's still a strong concensus around paying taxes and getting your money's worth in education, social security and paved roads.
• totalZero 9y ago
  That's part of it, but it's also a question of who bears the tax burden. Some of these places have lost tons of manufacturing jobs and can't afford to do improvements on a local level, and I imagine there's a more generalized dejection that makes collective infrastructure investments repulsive.
• mjevans 9y ago
  It's also arguably about not wisely routing and specking civic infrastructure. The 'who pays' also goes towards the increased operating costs and lost time (forced slower travel speed) of users. I can't help but wonder how much other alternative road types might cost, nor lament that we don't put nearly the foundation and engineering in to these things that many parts of Europe do. (I've heard they build things /once/ really well, and that maintenance is then lower after that.)