ABSTRACT
Many of the contemporary pursuits of QOL that I have examined to this point have rather obvious political aspects. Consumption taxes and public subsidies for child daycare, to name just two issues touched upon in Chapters 3 and 4, exemplify policies designed to enhance QOL; they are also political insofar as their advocates enter legislative and electoral arenas to endorse their views of the greater good as worthier than competing views and legislation. Many individual and household decisions made for non-political reasons also comprise a kind of politics, insofar as they embody a tacit policy of institutional non-decisionmaking (Crenson 1971). From the last chapter, the decision to relocate to a rural amenity destination represents a form of “voting with your feet.” When multiplied en masse by other households with similar aspirations and opportunities, this market-based redistribution of population and growth pressure absolves governments from dealing with the effects of urban growth and infrastructure strain in the sending regions-or at least the demands of affluent voters, who apparently indicate their view of the costs and benefits of the “rat race” by either ‘getting away from it all’ or consenting to stay put (cf. Peterson 1981; Tiebout 1956).
