Everything and I do mean everything that is wrong with non-resident taxpayers can be summed up in a recent letter to the editor in the Cape Codder.
Someone is writing because he is unhappy with his lot in life. He is a permanent resident of one of the most expensive states in the Union (New Jersey) and owns a second home in one of the most expensive towns on Cape Cod (Chatham).
His complaints are as follows.
He lives in West Chatham, which he feels is being slighted by the bigwigs in Chatham Town. (This is a town of 24 square miles, eight of which are WATER.) The slights are,
An Ocean State Job Lot has moved into the old A&P building in West Chatham.
A Dunkin' Donuts has been built in West Chatham.
Some affordable housing has been built in West Chatham.
He is distressed at the
degradation of the charm of Olde New England and the
increased traffic and makes a point of saying that he patronizes the local coffee shop that still serves honest coffee to the fisherman of the town instead of sucking those elite lattes at Dunkin Doughnuts.
Listen asshole, if you knew ANYTHING about New England, you'd know Dunkin' Doughnuts was a time-honored tradition. And that thrifty Yankees shop at overstock places like the Job Lot...which let us note, moved into a decaying rusting hulk of a building. And that affordable housing is probably the only place those fishermen can live in your vision of quaint picturesque New England.
I don't want to compare myself too directly to indigenous peoples decimated by genocide, but this man's letter makes me empathize with some poor sod of a Native American, stuck at a Trading Post in the middle of a reservation, having to be all "native" and shit and selling pretty blankets to the tourists. The ranks of second-home ownership are dominated by assholes who want to slum it for a summer in a quaint town, but aren't interested in the actual problems or needs of said town.
(P.S. He also throws in a slur against PBS supposedly being on the television at the Dunkin' Doughnuts for reasons that completely escape me. )