Editor's Letter: Our country’s future

last updated 8 January 2015

In Colorado Springs, says local businessman Chuck Fowler, “Atlas is shrugging.’’ The city government of that conservative, anti-tax community had a huge hole carved in its budget by the recession, falling sales-tax revenues, and escalating pension and health-care costs. When the city proposed tripling property taxes to make up the shortfall, the indignant citizenry said: No way. So Colorado’s second-largest city is now a laboratory in minimalist, Ayn Rand–style government: Dozens of police and firefighter jobs are being eliminated, and the police helicopter is up for sale. Recreation centers and pools are being shuttered; potholes will be left unrepaired; more than a third of the streetlights have been turned off. Parks will not be mowed regularly or watered at all; municipal trash cans are being hauled off, and replaced by signs advising people to take responsibility for their own trash.

Is this our country’s future? Quite clearly, our appetite for government services now exceeds our willingness—indeed, our ability—to pay. Even the federal government cannot print money and borrow trillions indefinitely. So do we accept painful tax increases at virtually every level of income—or do we drastically reduce our ambitions, and our expectations? (See Controversies.) For more than half a century, America has truly been the exceptional nation, with a costly safety net for the poor and the elderly; armies of public servants to educate our kids, clean up our messes, and keep order; and a military so rich in weaponry and manpower that we have extended our influence over every corner of the globe. Sooner or later, something has to give, and it will have to be big. You can’t erase trillion-dollar deficits by turning out the streetlights.