— Musings —07.18.2012 08:45 AM
— Musings —07.18.2012 08:45 AM
That expressway is nothing but an eyesore….
Could they have made it any more ugly?
This stuff is what happens after 20 years of selfish tax cut propaganda. We choose to spend too much money on private consumption rather than public goods — our society spends more on ever bigger TVs, 3 car garages, Jetskis and JLo CDs instead of keeping up with infrastructure, enough doctors trained (we rank Waaaaaay down the list on per capital physicians in the OECD — France has twice as many, hence virtually no waiting lists), etc.
Private wealth and public squalor — Galbraith summed it up nicely. He also used the horse and sparrow analogy — the horses get the oats and all the little sparrows eat what’s left coming out the other end. So much more illustrative than the trickle down theory.
Now those are some good points! Don’t know if I agree with them 100% but nonetheless excellent post.
But you’re driving in the safest city in the world. According to Jaba the Mayor.
It’s Jabba……two b’s.
And yes….it was funny.
Nothing that a wrecking ball can’t cure.
The Gardiner Expressway is a reminder of how stupid traffic design was 50 years ago.
It’s a blight on the landscape, knock it down and start digging.
Hopefully you won’t need to be airlifted to a hospital.
Ha! Good one 🙂
Yes Terry….it’s all Harper’s fault the city of Toronto can’t look after its own roads. After all….Harper is from Toronto.
James, which levels of government take care of infrastructure funding?
Don’t cities get most of their funding from the provincial government, not the federal? And therefore, isn’t the province on the hook when things go wrong at the municipal level? After all, that was certainly the line I heard when the Ontario PCs were in power provincially and the Liberals were in power federally, back in the late 90s…
(In fact, it’s more complicated then that, regardless of which Premier or PM is in office from whatever party. I’m just interested to see that Terence and Philip didn’t mention Queen’s Park.)
Well, I did ask the question because I wasn’t entirely sure about how the responsibilities were divided up between federal and provincial levels. I am pretty sure that the ability of a municipality is limited to property taxes and bond issues. Toronto and other large Canadian cities can’t fund medium to large infrastructure projects by themselves.
Large Canadian cities do need a new status in Canada. Some have infrastructure dating back 100 years or more, all of them are expanding in both size and population. Large cities are where opportunities are being created and a lot wealth is being created in Canada. Now is the time to grow support for cities, provincial and federal, not cut back.