Denying the Glue that Holds Society Together

I find the rabid tax aversion of Americans very, very odd. Here's what you get when your dream comes true (from the Denver Post):

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.
More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.
The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.
Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.
Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.
City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

If you love this apocalyptic vision of the "world of tomorrow", then go read the whole article.

It is as if parents in America have suddenly demanded that their kids "carry their own weight" or that people believe that everybody who needs transportation "should go buy their own car". It is nutty. It ignores the needs of an infrastructure that only social spending can give you. This approach will end up with the walled-off homes of the third world where public spaces are squalid while behind 15 foot walls people with means frolic is fabulous wealth.

This is a short term feel-good approach to social obligations, but if you don't provide schools, health care, roads, police, etc. you end up a rat-infested no-man's land where only the rabid criminals and the fanatically tight-fisted ultra-rich are happy. Everybody else gets to scrounge the alley along with the dogs and cats to find scraps overlooked by others. Sad.