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Joe's avatar

Thanks for another excellent article. Like you, I'm concerned about both spending and debt. Most people take for granted the services government provides: roads, bridges, water, environmental protection, parks, support for the less fortunate, the list goes on and on. But debt can also be crippling, even for the federal government, because the growing interest on that debt must be paid. Unfortunately, taxes has become a five letter word, so while expenses rise, they are not matched by revenue. And it's future generations that will be increasingly affected. But perhaps the recent debt deal is a hopeful sign that democrats and republicans can work together to address this, and other, seemingly intractable problems.

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mike parwana's avatar

Good column.

I’m a cheapskate. Partly it’s a function of having been poor for a long part of my adult life, so I’ve gotten past the point where advertisers can overly influence me with shiny new stuff. But I don’t waste money on cheap junk either. Quality tires save lives, running on sketchy tires in the rain and snow is false economy. By the same token running fat off-road tires just to look cool is expensive and wasteful.

I attended the opening ceremony of the new LG water treatment plant. It’s a $25+ million facility to replace one built in the 30’s. That plant was many decades past its useful life and had not been updated to modern standards. As a result nutrients that irreversibly diminished water quality in Lake George were flowing into what we like to think of as the pristine basis of our local tourism economy. It would take a sophisticated economic/ecological analysis to get a solid number on the cost to our environment stemming from waiting many decades past the useful life of the old treatment plant for a replacement. Almost certainly the cost was far greater than the extra millions it cost to build the new plant - which was known to be necessary. So it was appropriate that Democrats at the state and federal level provided millions to build the new plant. I don’t remember the number, something like $19million of the cost?

I was struck by a comment from BOS Chair Kevin Geraghty at the opening. He said, “that (old) plant didn’t owe us anything.” I think he believed allowing the outdated plant to operate for decades was economical, that we saved money. That is the kind of “fiscal conservatism” that hurts us. It is false economy. It’s like trying to get a few more miles out of your bald tires in December.

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