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."