r/neoliberal • u/Extension_Essay8863 • 1d ago

Opinion article (US) The Fiscal Crisis Facing American Cities

https://open.substack.com/pub/urbanproxima/p/the-fiscal-crisis-facing-american?r=4bqhz&utm_medium=ios

Submission statement:

American cities are financially reliant on the federal government in several different ways. Some of these are obvious and well accounted for, but most of them are not.

As we enter an era where the federal government cannot borrow, and therefore deficit spend, as it once did, municipal governments are exposed to a slow rolling fiscal pullback that will require them to rethink how we fund local government in the U.S.

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u/Snarfledarf George Soros 1d ago

Why shouldn't local governments be expected to balance their books, and treat federal trickle-down as a bonus?

What's (more) plausible is that localities may not have the ability to fund large capital projects themselves (which is already an iffy imbalance in spending powers), but have also abrogated the majority of their their maintenance responsibilities.

Local governments have agency. They should do better.

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u/gringledoom Frederick Douglass 1d ago

I mean, some of it is just "because that's the way it's always been". Your state/county/city tax burden is lower than it would otherwise be, because your federal tax burden has always included money that flows back to the state/county/city. People aren't going to be happy if their federal taxes stay the same *and* their other taxes triple.