I wrote on Friday that I would consider a bit more about Whitewater’s 2015 proposed budget today.
This post’s title frames how to think about the budget: the city’s fiscal condition is only a small part of the local economy’s condition. Important, to be sure, but also small.
Many city services are ordinary and commonplace throughout America: providing public safety, impartially administering elections, maintaining municipal streets and lighting, etc. Add the public school system to the mix, and one has most common public services provided in small towns.
Whitewater has additionally a medium-sized public university within its city limits; it’s the single biggest distinction (public or private) between our city and nearby ones.
But I’ll ask this question about Whitewater: does one imagine that her public infrastructure (e.g., streets, utilities, telecommunications) is undeveloped?
I’ll suggest that the answer is no, that it’s not undeveloped at all. We’re not lacking in roads, utilities, or telecommunications. Roads need repair, of course, but we have roads now. Utilities may need modifications to meet changing legal requirements, but we have utilities now. Telecommunications might be more advanced, but we have private broadband now.
We don’t lack these things, as though we were a desert.
If anything, it’s almost nutty to contend that a Wisconsin city with a public university is undeveloped, or even under-developed in comparison to neighboring cities.
And yet, and yet – the long-range discussion for Whitewater (and other places nearby) often depends on the insistence that we are undeveloped, or at least under-developed, and that government must tax or borrow to assure greater development through big projects.
There’s a profound difference between providing basic public services and falling into the false conviction that we need more, must have more, of greater and greater size, and at public expense.
I don’t know what terrible insecurity grips a few who insist that we need to fill their hands with public money so that they can ‘grow Whitewater’s economy.’
Whitewater doesn’t need them to do these things; they’ve not grown the economy before, and they’ll not do it now.
Meaningful and efficient economic growth comes from private parties in voluntary transactions, needing no public middle-men to guide them to this city, or arrange deals.
There’s a role for public spending, and I’ve contended that we should spend more in some areas, including on emergency services for the poor.
We should also be prepared to assist those merchants we have here now, if and when necessary. Their sustenance will bring others. (A successful restaurant culture, for example, helps merchants and even other restaurateurs.) A boost in the funding that these brick & mortar businesses receive would be more useful and less costly than any grand project or support for white-collar startups.
These simple and understandable expenditures would be far less than a roundabout, or two-million for a gateway to the town, and would have greater immediate and practical benefit.
The fewer big-capital projects we undertake, and less white-collar assistance we provide, in the next year or beyond, the better off we’ll be.
In any event, we’re certainly not undeveloped in infrastructure now.
On the contrary, we are a small yet modern town.