Comment by JuniperMesos

> And every time you decide to cut on services, you are just moving money elsewhere: more inequality -> more social tensions and criminality, you just end up paying way more to live in a safe place and pay for private and public security and prisons.

There's no reason to think that the amount of taxpayer-funded services in a political jurisdiction has inversely proportional relationship with amount of crime that that happens there (nor any particular relationship with what kinds of crime, how serious the specific crimes are, and so on). Same thing with social tensions - social tension are caused by a lot of things, many of which aren't particularly related to the raw amount of taxpayer-funded services that exist. Would a more redistributive welfare state have made the partition of India between (mostly) Hindus and (mostly) Muslims less likely, for instance?