Quote:
Originally Posted by Lindy
'Taint necessarily so. My parents pay very high taxes --especially property taxes on the value of land, which does NOT necessarily produce income.  Taxes are quite high, and services paltry. The schools are not bad, but the closest top notch hospital is two hours away. The local police are not very competent and the county and state cops not usually around. My parents live on a narrow two lane highway that has needed repaving for years. The fire department is a group of local volunteers.
Your statement shows typical urban bias and ignorance of the way things are outside of urban areas.
Lindy |
This has nothing to do with urban bias. It may be that your parents enjoy a lower-than-average level of government services despite paying a lot in taxes; after all, we were talking earlier about the services different groups of people receive on average. There can always be exceptions.
But this doesn't change the basic math. Schools are primarily paid for by property taxes. Higher property taxes in an area results in more money for schools. Therefore, richer areas tend to have better schools. Furthermore, people tend to live in close proximity to others who share their economic status. Rich people, and by extension, rich areas have more influence politically than poor people. Their complaints get heard, their money helps politicians get reelected, etc. So they tend to receive superior services.
The fact that this isn't always true, or that rich people living in generally poorer areas won't necessarily experience the same thing, doesn't disprove the theory.
And as for the urban bias thing - as a life-long city-dweller, I can assure you that there are many areas of every city which contain both poor, middle income, and possibly even rich residents, and the services are terrible. So the same phenomenon of some rich people receiving poor government services holds true even in some of the world's biggest cities.