Yeah, the only folks who should pass judgement on medical treatment are plumbers. And the guy down at the 7-11, you know the one, he clearly knows a lot about prescription medication!

Well, maybe for surgical cases, we should allow master carpenters onto the board.

</sarcasm>

What makes you think that city people need more garbage pickup? To pick up trash in an apartment block where all residents have to take it down to a central dumpster must be cheaper than having a dump truck drive 10 between houses?

I read the Green Lantern column at slate.com, and over and over the columnist points out that assessing how green one product over another is depends a lot on the distribution. And the largest source of CO2 in distribution is in the last mile, from store to home. So buying New Zealand lamb from a store you can walk to has much lower emissions than driving to a farmer's market and buying locally produced lamb.

I'm arguing that the tax burden is a hidden way of shifting money from urban dwellers to rural dwellers. Garbage collection and utilities are services used in both settings, so you'll have to convince me that there is some accounting abnormality to explain the difference in tax payments.

Are there services in the city that aren't available in rural areas which the city taxes pay for?

And given that you've posted AC, I wonder if you are being snarky.

This is also the reason why un-PC language is so offensive. If you use certain terms for certain objects (and PEOPLE) you shape the way you think about them - which can be a way of continuing to demean, oppress, or exploit.

This is a feature of the left and the right. It makes a difference if Keith Olbermann and Rush Limbaugh were to suddenly both stop using inflammatory language. At least in my opinion.

Your children probably had cognitive functions before language, but then lots of animals besides humans have cognitive functions too, and don't have as complex a linguistic structure as human speech.

For example, according to this Radio Lab episode, rats can be trained to find food behind the left door, and they can be trained to find food behind the blue door, but they only find food 50% of the time if they have to find the food behind the door to the left of the blue wall.

And children up to the age of about 4? 5? 6? (I can't remember anymore, but well past learning to talk) have the same deficiency. Also, so do adults, if you give them a demanding verbal task to do at the same time.

So, I'd have to agree with GP: It's pretty difficult to think about things you have no words for.

Unless (s)he meant that it is impossible to do so. It is possible, but clearly very, very difficult.

Here's the link. The experiment with the rats starts at about 11 minutes in and the kids version starts at around 15 minutes in (on the podcast, anyway, which has an extra intro)

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2010/09/10

Interesting comment about cities being more subsidized. Do you have any evidence? I think that cities are punitively taxed, yet people still move to them because the benefits still outweigh the extra taxes.

For example:
Urban areas pay more than they otherwise would for telecommunications to subsidize rural connectivity
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/07/federal-subsidies-for-rural-living/

Fuel used for non-farming purposes cannot claim back tax paid on it. Rebates for an industry primarily situated in rural areas sounds suspiciously like a subsidy to rural areas.
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/industries/article/0,,id=98980,00.html

Agricultural subsidies are a giant rip-off for taxpayers, funneling money to the largest producers of wheat, corn, soybeans, rice, and cotton. While rural residents are not typically better off for this, there are a lot more urban taxpayers than rural taxpayers.
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agriculture/rural-subsidies

Large cities often impose an additional sales (or wage) tax in addition to what the state already imposes; rural residents avoid paying those taxes.
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbycity2005/index.html

Rural areas generally create more CO2 per resident than urban areas, but I feel certain that the costs of CO2 reduction will not be assessed proportionately.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html

As for why urbanites still live in cities, despite all these 'crushing' taxes? One reason might be economic: earnings grow more quickly for individuals who live in cities. The analysis points to the advantages of being close to experience you can learn from.
timharford.com

So this comment might not be conclusive, but at least I have some evidence, rather than just prejudice for holding my opinion.