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Almost nowhere in the history of the world does safe drinking water flow freely out of the tap. The US has been one of the exceptions due to the tireless effort
by spoonjim 4y ago
Almost nowhere in the history of the world does safe drinking water flow freely out of the tap. The US has been one of the exceptions due to the tireless efforts of professionals working under a political system that saw itself as stewards of all citizens present and future and treated public goods as apolitical entities to be shepherded rather than used as political footballs. That is no longer true and water crises are just the tip of the iceberg.
- bee_rider 4y agoI sort of wonder if the problem might actually be that it isn't enough of a football. Infrastructure is seen as a generally good thing. This means that every politician will of course say "blah blah I'm going to fix the water blah blah." But when push comes to shove, it isn't a wedge issue, it doesn't excite their voters in a partisan manner. Nobody is opposed to it, it can't be used as a concession. I imagine the response, in most cases, to a party asking the other to sacrifice a core interest for an infrastructure win is "you can't use 'providing basic services to your constituents' as a bargaining chip, you should want to do that anyway."
- KerrAvon 4y agoI don’t know about that. I suspect this may be again a case where reality has a liberal bias. Cities in California don’t have these problems, at least not for months at a time.
- amanaplanacanal 4y agoCalifornia trends to have problems with electricity instead.