There are some conversations I'm just too old for, and "social spending doesn't solve problems" is one of them. I've literally watched education, health care, housing, local news, and public transit be systemically defunded, dismantled, and neglected for most of my almost 47 years of life. *My* classrooms ballooned from 20 kids to 30, *my* band class, french immersion, enrichment programs were disrupted by cost-cutting measures, *my* tuition was 4x the tuition of students just 5 years older than me, lower-middle class kids of *my* generation and later are the ones working two or three precarious jobs (if we aren't already disabled by toxic workplaces) for half as much on a slow-cooking planet, watching the price of even the dilapidated shacks always shift just out of our reach while billionaires take pleasure cruises to outer space.

I am NOT a person to take "social spending doesn't do anything" when I saw just how much social cost-cutting fucking destroyed dreams for two-going-on-three generations, lol.