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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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When 6 or 8 people can't get a place for their kid, this is bad for them, but at a city level it is a rounding error

What is the point of paying a huge percentage of ones income as taxes if the taxing authority can't provide the services it promises and you need, when you need them?

Practically the government can't provide and predict services perfectly. So you can over provide (therefore wasting tax payer money) or try to provide services at the level you think they will be needed. Balancing how much to spend on the health services and education and roads and everything else. Too much in one area means too little in an area.

Now governments can and do get that wrong and that should be rectified and fedback into your allocation process to improve it. But crucially the amount of money you spend getting your allocation process better also sucks money from the projects in question.

So there is a level of fidelity which is somewhere less than perfect but gets you close enough. And it is likely that you will under allocate somewhere and some people will suffer. Perfect is simply not possible.

So yes, it is likely some number of taxpayers will not get services they need at the exact time they need them. Minimizing that number is important, but making it perfect even if possible probably means reducing the amount of funding you have to spend in the first place. Possibly reducing the overall number of people who can access the service at all.