There\u2019s a lot of back and forth in the news about the appropriate size, shape, and funding sources for government. At least \u2026 that\u2019s what I see when I choose to pretend that people are talking and thinking about what\u2019s good for the nation rather than just yelling at each other and vying for power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any event, I have an idealized recollection of Minnesota\u2019s snow removal laws from when I lived in Saint Paul. They went something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* The city is responsible for keeping the streets clear. They also cut out around fire hydrants and so on. That\u2019s tax funded.
* Property owners are responsible for keeping their sidewalks clear and safe.
* You have 12 hours after the snow stops to make that happen.
* After 12 hours, the city sends around crews. If the crews clear your sidewalks, you pay a moderate fine. It\u2019s more than what you would have to pay someone to come and shovel for you (to discourage people from using the city as their snow service) \u2013 but not crippling.
* If you push your snow into the streets, you pay a fairly massive fine. I remember it being $700 per incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my opinion, this setup strikes a nice balance. You\u2019ve got a taxpayer funded system for shared infrastructure, an insistence on personal responsibility, and a safety net because \u2013 at the end of the day \u2013 you need to have clear sidewalks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe we could do something similar with health care?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a lot of back and forth in the news about the appropriate size, shape, and funding sources for government. At least \u2026 that\u2019s what I see when I choose to pretend that people are talking and thinking about what\u2019s good for the nation rather…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1477,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/1477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}