Private opulence, public squalor was the signature of the British Victorian era, and now it's becoming the norm in an increasingly ramshackle, deindustrialized and destitute US.
The myth spread by the bankster swine who swindled, conned, or outright stole trillions of dollars of other people's money is that America is too poor to pay for public services (never mind the trillion we waste every year fighting enemies which don't exist anymore, or the trillions spent on bankster bailouts). It's a time of shared sacrifice, so their stooges and quislings bleat.
Utter bilge. First of all, public workers make less than private workers (public workers have a different skill mix, which throws off straight-line comparisons, but compared as service-workers to service-workers, public jobs pay less).
Second, bankster vampires have been gaming the municipality bond market for decades, raking off huge fees and dumping toxic assets and shady deals onto the public books. This is part of the same strategy of debt servitude which has been destroying the US middle class for thirty years: instead of taxing the rich, float bonds ultimately paid for by the middle class.
Third, Astroturf pressure groups cooked up by obnoxious billionaires create the illusion of popular assent for additional neoliberal scams which further enrich the 1% and impoverish the 99%. Often these take the form of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which claim to be fighting for the 99% -- and then stab us in the back behind closed doors. Just watch this incredible video of Stand For Children's co-founder Jonah Edelman openly take credit for destroying Chicago's teachers unions, by pushing the failed and bogus drill-to-kill agenda of educational testing and privatization through Illinois's legislature.
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