One of the things that has

happened to all of us is that we have failed to think about where things like even simple trash collection comes from. We don't have our trash hauled away magically, we pay someone else to do this for us by paying taxes.
Trash removal is something a lot of people take for granted and every week we haul our trash cans, herby-curbys, rubbish tins, whatever out to the curb and it magically disappears.

Of course when the municipality send us the bill in whatever form, we gripe for a few minutes, pay it and give it no mind.

I've lived in places where there is no curbside service and you take your own trash to the dump. The dump is generally managed by the municipality and we pay for being able to take our trash there i the same way we pay for curbside service but because there isn't a fleet of trucks and trash guys to pay for it's generally a whole lot cheaper.

Personally I like taking my trash to the dump. Saturday mornings I get to meet a lot of peole doing the same thing and sometimes people are throwing something out that I can use.

More than once I have come home wth about as much as I brought with me.

Still, it's whole lot cheaper to take your own trash to the dump on your own. For another thing you can take it there when you feel like it and don't have to wake up and remember that it's trash day. If i decide to go every two weeks or so it's cheaper yet.

Another thing a lot of us take for granted is paved roads. Most of us live alongside one, and we take it for granted.

As someone that has lived in a lot of far flung remote outposts I can say that to me there really isn't a whole lot of difference and in a way unpaved can be a whole lot safer.

Unpaved roads often set their own speed limits because they are not anywhere near as smooth as paved roads. On turnpikes I have to constantly look at my speedometer to see how fast I am going. On unpaved roads my butt tells me when I am going too fast. They are a lot cheaper to build and maintain and in most places they serve the purpose about as well as their paved equivilent.

I know a guy that lives in West Virginia and one day he commented, "I pay about $35 a year in property taxes and about once every year or so they run a scraper down my unpaved roads. That's worth about $35."

He seems happy enough with that arrangement.

So let's take today's post to North Carolina which is a pretty laid back place to live and because in many parts the government doesn't provide a whole lot of services. The result of the unpaved secondary roads and trash dumps means lower taxes.

Meanwhile back in New Jersey where people have trash pickup and almost every road in the state is paved, nice and civilized we have Joe Jerseyite looking at how wonderful it must be like to live in Mayberry, North Carolina and not get wallopped with the taxes he has to cough up in New Jersey.

Over the years I have posted here that one of my pet peeves is someone that moves from a cesspool (like New Jersey) to a nice place (like North Carolina) and brings his cesspool ways with him and starts demanding paved side roads, weekly trash pickup service and then wonders why all of the locals hate him for driving their taxes up.

Right now I am sitting here wondering why stupidity like this happens and I have come to the conclusion that most people thing of the government as an unlimited source of money to be used to make their lives easier.

I can see why when you consider that that seems to be what government has done over the years. They have spent an awful lot of money and spend it twice as fast as they collect our taxes.

Most people don't think much about it because they simply look at the net on their paychecks.

What we ought to do to straighten up the mess we are in is to simply stop taking weekly taxes out of paychecks and simply handing out the IRS form 1040s come April.

After a year or two of people having to write a check of that size to the IRS you can bet that a lot of attitudes toward governmental spending would change and change fast.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html