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Non Excludability And Non Rivalrous Consumption

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Imagine this: a car with a newly repaired suspension and a recent alignment job on four new tires driving on a poorly maintained road filled with holes. In the span of ten minutes, the car has driven over four potholes about half of a foot deep, and the two thousand dollars that were spent on the car are all wasted in that short drive. Public goods are a large part of our life. The condition of the roads we drives on and the sidewalk we walk on, the jobs we get, and the house we can afford to live in are all influenced directly by the public goods. According to Tyler Cowen, professor of Economics at George Mason University, public goods are anything that has “non-excludability and non-rivalrous consumption.” In other words, it cannot be kept from those who do not contribute and can be used by multiple people at the same time. In the Atlanta metropolitan area, the distribution of public goods is on vastly different levels. Because public goods are funded through taxes, the income gap in various areas of the metropolitan area plays a huge factor in the distribution of the goods. A wealthier region’s tax fund is significantly higher because of the higher price range, especially on everyday goods and the availability of services. One great example is Milton High School located in North Fulton County where income averages are in the sixth digit and Banneker High School in South Fulton with a five digit average. Milton has an above Georgia average in both mathematics and English,

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