LETTER What are we willing to pay?
What are we willing to pay?
What are we willing to pay to be safe and prosperous?
In real budget terms, how much are we willing to pay for being safe?
How much more in taxes are we willing to pay to improve school safety?
How much more are we willing to pay for better roads?
How much more for better jobs? Would you pay to have an industry bring in new jobs? What are you willing to pay to have a sports team near you?
Each month as I do my monthly budget, I wonder what these things cost. So I began look at some simple things.
According to studies done in the last few years, citizens never break even, or receive any benefit, on many of these issues. Corporate giveaway projects, like stadiums or attracting industry, fail to bring the benefits touted by elected officials.
This is not new. Let’s take the coal industry, for example. Some studies indicate Pennsylvania citizens never received a fair share from coal being removed and sold to the world. The Marcellus Shale industry looks the same. The question might be, should the commonwealth’s citizens receive some benefits from folks that extract our resources, or our work effort? Yes, a small group of folks do get paid big for this, but is that enough to balance the cost of schools or infrastructure?
As I write a bigger check to pay my school taxes because the state has trimmed its education budget, or ride down the road and break a tire hitting a pothole caused by a 40-ton water truck, I am angry.
We have the second-largest state government in the U.S., and as far as I can see our state motto should be, “Bring money, we will sell anything.”
John Andrews
Jefferson