Opinion Piece

For more than ten years, Flint Michigan has struggled with a water crisis of unprecedented proportions. It has taken nearly a decade for any substantial work to be done to fix the issue, but even still, the majority of the city’s working class is struggling to acquire clean drinking water.

Part of the issue is the city’s budget, which is a measly 5 million dollars. For a crisis of this proportion, Flint’s residents have said time and time again that an amount of money this small cannot make a dent in the city’s larger issue of infrastructure problems.

American cities are drowning in debt, causing them to raise taxes higher, resulting in less economic activity by common consumers, resulting in even more debt. It is a vicious cycle that does not have a visible conclusion. This is not just Flint’s problem; it is present in nearly every city and town in America. City budgets that would have otherwise gone to the building of new houses, roads, or public utilities, are instead used to pay off the interest on debts that will never be paid off in full.

Flint was merely the first domino to fall in a long line of crises that have ripped America’s towns into pieces.

Americans need solutions that will systematically restructure the country around financial structures that work for them, instead of big business and stockbrokers betting on the future of the country’s citizens.