For a long time I have thought that our society has been too cheap for their own good.
Hurricane Harvey got me thinking about this again. I was amazed to read that the drainage system in the Houston area was completely chaotic. Now I know that the floods in Houston could have never been prevented no matter how good the drainage system was. But it was surprising to see that they cheaped out on a good safe drainage system.
I have other examples. I constantly hear people yelling about high taxes and all the damage high taxes will do. On the other hand low taxes will bring in new business and industry that will share the tax burden. What people fail to realize is that the new businesses need new services built. Many times businesses are encouraged to locate as they are promised tax relief and benefits.
Health care is expensive. People are loudly warning that we will not be able to afford our health care at the present level. They somehow or other think that if people pay for their own health care it would be so much better...better if you want to let people die because they can't afford health care. But what really matters in health care is preventative health care. Try as much as possible to prevent people from getting sick and the costly health care will be less.
We let public buildings get into such poor condition that we have to do costly renovation when if they'd spent money on upkeep the building would last much longer. Here, a large school that was built in 1968 will be bulldozed once it's $10000000.00 replacement is finished. The powers that be were too cheap to keep the old school in good condition so now it is to their thinking beyond repair.
Now I can hear lots of examples about how tax money is wasted and that's true in many cases. But's what's wrong with developing a system that works and projects are done efficiently.
One of my favorite gripes is that this province, Alberta, subsidizes the drilling of each oil well to the tune of $300.00 per meter drilled. The last time I looked oil companies were supposed to be very profitable and generating lots of tax revenue.
In a recent post I gave an example of our local museum where funds for a new museum were voted down but much money was put into the old museum. Sooner than later a new museum will have to be built .
So I think that if we weren't so cheap to start with and developed adequate programs and built good quality infrastructure , we might not always have to be rebuilding. We might also be safer and healthier.
