If you want to cheap out on a new shirt—you’re heading, say, to Target instead of Bergdorf Goodman—you probably expect to get a totally fine piece of cloth to hang on your back, and won't get too upset when it inevitably falls apart. The same, tragically, does not apply to American roads. If you don’t pay what the street is worth, the street is going to be bad, for everyone: potholed, packed with traffic, smoggy, poorly monitored by law enforcement.

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