High regulation, low trust - #371
We're at the stage of our home addition where the final invoice is about to be sent and it's about to wipe out our extra funds. Right at the time when I thought our usual spending was under enough control to build back up those funds, our van's shock absorbers gave out. It wasn't a giant setback financially, although it certainly is a noticeable expense. Was it preventable? I think it may've been: our city's streets are riddled with years-old potholes; the state highway up to the ski hill has been patched in a few places with gravel, which the snowplows regularly scrape away; when you drive on I-93 to New Hampshire, you can tell where state line is precisely: the road has two additional lanes and is perfectly smooth in the Granite State, while in the Bay State its narrower lanes are rough with grooves and holes and decrepitude. We pay the commonwealth twenty-seven cents per gallon of gas; we pay the feds eighteen: neither can keep the roads paved.