Discussion assignment

For the opening discussion of this class, I want to see your answers develop in two parts. Before answering the discussion topic, you should read Chapters 1 and 2, and review the associated lecture PPT in the "Lectures" section of the class.

As the title of this course suggests, this class focuses on the specific nuances of financing and administering the expenditures of public organizations - more specifically, governmental bodies. Though the text focuses rather heavily on local government, most of the concepts that you will read and learn about during this course applies in some fashion or other to all levels of government in the United States.

There is not a citizen nor resident of the United States that is not in some way affected by public finance, whether that be from paying property taxes on a home to paying sales tax at the Chik-Fil-A drive-through window. 

For the first part of your answer, describe your initial impression of the methods and general fairness of the various financing mechanisms available to your local government that you know of, whatever they may be - sales tax, income tax, etc. Describe only that with which you have some familiarity, i.e. you do not need to read ahead in the text or take a crash course on taxation.

For the second part of your answer, describe your initial impression of the administration and expenditures of your local government to the best of your knowledge.

Once you have posted your answer, compare and comment on your experience with your local government's financing and expenditures with that of your fellow students.

I am specifically interested in the impressions as we begin this course that you all have about the operation of your own local governments as pertains to collecting and spending money, and how that compares to that of your classmates. Later in this course we are going to revisit these impressions, after we have had a fair amount of time reviewing the meat-and-potatoes of taxation, budgeting, and administration