The key reason that communities are struggling is the huge burden of interest payments that are flowing to the big banks.

Think about this: if you buy a home for, say, $100,000, typically you will have paid $250,000 once the loan is paid off. This means the typical loan will incur $150,000 in interest charges.

The same concept applies when a community builds an infrastructure project such as a school, road, bridge, sewer or other project. That $1 million dollar school could end up costing taxpayers in the community $2.5 million after interest charges.

So taxpayers are paying more to the financiers of the project than to those who supplied the materials and actually committed the labor to build it. Are you OK with bankers acting as the middleman, sucking prosperity from our communities?

Any good business model dictates the efficiency of eliminating middlemen. If we look at cities like Detroit and Philadelphia, hundreds of millions of dollars in interest payments and fees are leaving the city and flowing into the coffers of Wall Street. This lost money impoverishes your community while Wall Street gets bigger and richer than ever.

Rudy Avizius is a former educator and school administrator. He is concerned that the current economic, social and environmental course we are on is not sustainable, and that the time for real change is running out.

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