What Makes One Curmudgeonly?

I've been an elected member of our local elementary school board since 1988 and throughout those years, we've been faced with serious underfunding issues. In Illinois, public education is funded primarily by property taxes at the local level. Without getting really detailed and boring, that system was workable up to the first half of the 20th century, but it's hopelessly maxed out now. Schools are subject to the same kinds of increasing costs (mostly related to salaries and benefits for staff which may consume 80% of a School District's budget) as the rest of the world, but property tax revenue is pretty much tapped out. In addition, as an early effort to pander to the voters, Illinois placed property tax limitations on schools in the Chicago suburbs years ago, so school districts are left with nowhere to go for necessary funds. Oh, did I mention that Illinois has a 3% flat income tax, one of the lowest in the nation? The State itself is now going broke itself with an estimated $11 billion deficit.

There are a lot of other reasons for our financial problems (like too many districts, too many local government units, etc), but IMO the biggest problem is our political leaders' inability to actually lead. Rather than suggest to us what we should do to solve societal problems, our so-called "leaders" devote their energy to telling us what they think we want to hear.

This is a leading cause of curmudgeon-ness (at least for me). No matter what political party is in power (and right now the State legislature and executive branch is controlled by Democrats), 99% of the politicians in Illinois are unwilling or unable to actually provide leadership. The pandering to the public is mind-numbing and relentless ("Taxes are too high," "Cut waste in government before we raise taxes"). The result has been gridlock. And don't get me started on our ex-Governor Blago; he was the King of Pandering. He's (in)famous for handing out free rides to everyone in the State over the age of 65 on public transportation (without providing any cash to the transit systems, of course). Well, that's only one of the things he's (in)famous for...

What politicians won't tell the public is that while Illinois has made graft, waste, and cronyism an artform) most of the State's budget issues are related to human services (education, health care, senior citizen care, highways, and the like). Citizens are all for cutting services that benefit someone else, but not so keen on cutting something that might affect themselves. And that's the underlying problem, for which we can maybe thank Ronald Reagan. We have lost that concept that there is a "public good" and that we as a people do things for the benefit of the many, not just for the benefit of the few. This was pretty much assumed back in the 1950s, but no more. As a society, we're preoccupied with "not in my backyard" and "what's in it for me?"

To quote Ashleigh Brilliant: "I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem."