@Dutchess_III: I knew that my city was responsible for things like street lights and I knew that some highways were county roads and some are state roads and stuff like that. Somewhat of an education comes not from school but in thinking about taxes, which taxes go to what services.
I didn’t learn about these things from college, I learned from talking to people. Once I started working for the government, of course I learned more.
It’s also funny that there are so many people that want a smaller government but yet they avail themselves of all kinds of governmental services and they enjoy what the government has to offer. I work in a county where taxes are very high but there are a lot of services – services for the poor, for seniors, beautiful parks, etc. I don’t see the logic of “let’s cut services, let’s cut staffing, let’s cut funding” but yet let’s go to the park, let’s bitch about road maintenance, let’s expect a short wait time at County office buildings.