Different Kinds of Math

I live in a small town, barely over 10,000 people and around 3 square miles. And yet, out of the 566 municipalities in New Jersey, it has a larger population than 60% of its neighbors -- we're #221.

This is so glaringly obviously the major problem with the cost of government in Jersey that everyone tries not to talk about it, to avoid embarrassment.

Because the obvious solution -- move most services to county-level government, since clearly our state is too gigantic and vast to run police, fire, and school organizations directly [1] -- would involve all of us nice suburbanites being plopped into the same system with "those people" in the larger cities.

I'm pretty sure most cost-of-government issues have similar solutions: clear, obvious, and impossible due to the people involved.


[1] Just in case it's unclear to some of my newer readers, I am being so sarcastic with this phrase that I am surprised the entire Internet does not burst into flames.