A person who opposes spending tax money on anything that is not absolutely essential -- and there are mighty few things that an aginner considers essential. Aginners are often elderly and often Southern, and they get their name because "if it costs money, they're agin' (against) it."

Aginners tend to take fiscal conservatism to its illogical extreme, arguing against government projects and services like school improvements, libraries, economic development, park improvements and maintenance, recreation programs, and infrastructure development. They almost never have any objections to anything that they use (playgrounds and trees for parks: nonessential; landscaping and improvements for the senior activity center: essential).

I was once covering a school board meeting for the newspaper I worked at. It was budget time, and the board members were wanting to install air conditioning in the local elementary school for the next year. A small group of aginners were opposed to it, with some old coot lecturing the board about wasting the taxpayers' money. "They didn't have air conditioning in schools when I was a boy," he said, to which one of the board members replied, drily, "They didn't have hip replacement surgery back then either, but I don't see you giving that up."

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