“The Last Time That Happened Was During the Great Depression”

Until a few years ago, running a U.S. city was pretty easy. You added services when voters asked, you hired more workers (who were likely to vote for you come election time) to provide the services, and you promised lavish retirement benefits to cops and teachers who weren’t going to retire until long after you left office. If tax revenues didn’t cover day-to-day operations, no problem; Washington was sending plenty of aid to make up the difference.

No longer. The gap between what a typical city gets from sales and property taxes and what it owes its employees is a now a chasm that even trillions in federal stimulus money can’t fill. So for the first time in most Americans’ memory, cities actually have to live within their means. The result, according to today’s Wall Street Journal, isn’t pretty.

http://dollarcollapse.com/articles/%E2%80%9Cthe-last-time-th...