Government growth
Many of the maladies that you are describing are a direct consequence of Big Government. Unfortunately, we are taught at an early age in our public schools that government is always benign and well intentioned. Therefore, if we are not careful, we miss the fact that the type of people who go into politics and who seek government positions are not altruistic individuals who want to serve their fellow citizens, but power-hungry individuals who want to control big bureaucracies with a huge staff and a staggering budget. These become their little empires, and they will want to continue to feed their empires by enacting more regulations and artificially creating more need and more "clients" as a reason for being and for demanding a larger slice of the tax revenues. No one managing these bureaucracies is motivated to cut the size of the empires they control. Instead, they will create rationales as to why the size of their empires should grow.
People need to wean themselves from their childish notions that government officials are their allies and are motivated by public service rather than by naked self-interest. Notice that government officials often react to the type of decline described in this article by demanding more money to "develop" areas of urban blight. This is like throwing money down a rat hole, because, by and large, the citizens of the city have already reacted and have "voted with their feet," moving away from the blighted area, never to return. That doesn't stop politicians and bureaucrats from demanding higher taxes from those who remain, thus ensuring that more people will move away to areas having a lower tax burden. Politicians and bureaucrats are inherently dishonest, because if they really looked these problems in the face, they would see that their own policies are responsible for making things worse, not better.
My home city has had budget problems for years. When I was young, I lived there and paid their stupid and ill-advised income tax for little or no services. Then I moved across the country. When I had a chance to return to my city a decade later, I made the wise decision to stay out of it, thus saving myself thousands of dollars. Politicians might think that the taxpayer is nothing more than a money tree, from which they can extract funds at will. But the result is that those who can afford to escape leave, and only those who do not have the means to do so (the poor and the elderly) are left behind.
