In today's NYT, economist Robert Frank writes: > economist Charles M. Tiebout explained in a seminal paper published in 1956, an important advantage of providing public services at the local level is that this enables us to better achieve our desired mix of public and private consumption.
>People who like lots of parkland, well-maintained roads, large police forces and good schools can thus gather in high-tax communities that provide these amenities, while others can choose low-tax communities and spend more of their income on private consumption. < I'm far from being an expert on this stuff, but this seems totally off-base even by neoclassical standards. It's not a matter of preferences. Almost everyone wants "lots of parkland, well-maintained roads, large police forces and good schools." The rich people clump together in towns and villages (like the ones near where I grew up in Illinois, where Donnie "Brasco" Rumsfeld was congresscritter) because they can live with their own kind -- and they can exclude others from the benefits. (In Kenilworth, Il, where I believe Rumsky lived, it was the Scottish.) -- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles
