Fiscally Conservative Suburbia

Note: I am about to make an argument with no regard to human values. That's on purpose. I'm not talking about helping people, but saving money. I can make an argument based on helping people too, and it's easy, but that's not this argument.

Everyone complains about the suburbs - it's become so common that it has passed through one end of cliche and out the other again. Environmentalists complain about suburbs. Drivers complain about suburbs. Urban planners complain about suburbs. Civil rights activists complain about suburbs. Cultural elites turn up their noses at the thought of the suburban cultural wasteland. Hipsters complain about suburbs as a matter of course. Teens complain about there being nothing to do out there - seniors grumble about how things were better when they lived wherever they did.

But one group that doesn't complain a great deal about suburbs is fiscal conservatives. This is because fiscal conservatives often seem to live in the suburbs, the bread and butter conservatives who fill the ranks of the Objectivist corps and the libertarian movement seem to prefer their nice house on a block full of identical houses, making suburbia the headquarters of the Independent American.

Which is odd, because there hasn't been a government social program that I can think of that has been funded at such a level for so long as the great suburban experiment. Of course there's no formal budget, but the US government spends an enormous amount of money on the suburbs.

How do they do that? Let's look at the ways:

( This Is How Much a White Picket Fence Costs )