5 ms·

I definitely support paying more taxes to improve the infrastructure/rural areas of the country, but I also start to think that maybe the country is just too bi

I definitely support paying more taxes to improve the infrastructure/rural areas of the country, but I also start to think that maybe the country is just too big. Are there any countries that are nearly this large that have a consistent quality of infrastructure for everyone? I live in a large city and it seems that even we have trouble maintaining up our roads/bridges/grid/telecom systems and we pay a lot of state taxes comparatively — I can't imagine how a much larger, less dense, less wealthy area filled with people staunchly against taxes could even begin to keep up.

tuna-piano 9y ago
Yes, it would be great if we could sub divide the large country into smaller areas, and give each of those areas control over most of the roads / bridges / etc. If spending and benefits are primarily local, shouldn't the decisions be as well?
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  I'd also imagine this could calm a lot of the "all our taxes go to the coastal elites" mentality and drum up support for local taxes (even though it's generally an errant stance).
- dcdanko 9y ago
  You mean like the States?
  - accountyaccount 9y ago
    Sure, but there's no regional intermediary. Government scales from city, to county, to state... then straight to federal.
    - Balgair 9y ago
      Not always true. SF is both a city and a county, for example. Also, different states do it differently. Colorado has many cities that span county lines. Yes, going across the street in the same city means you now are under different laws. This isn't all that different than, say, a school district and it's tax base. We do also have regional systems, like the Mississippi/Colorado river watershed districts that help manage and maintain water usage in those areas. These inter-state issues have been cropping up for a long time (Bleeding Kansas, for an extreme example) and we mostly manage them pretty well and pretty silently. Turns out, the constitution actually does work alright.
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      > Sure, but there's no regional intermediary. Government scales from city, to county, to state... then straight to federal. There are only 50 states. The median state is larger than Greece. The true problem is that the federal government is responsible for spending three times as many tax dollars as all the states put together. The county government knows they need to fix the bridge, but the feds took all the money the local taxpayers could spare and spent it on not-the-bridge.
      - breatheoften 9y ago
        How many of those federal dollars spent are for the military?
        AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        Federal Outlays: ~$3.8T Federal Defense: ~$0.7T
        breatheoften 9y ago
        Heres a graph of federal revenues -- https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/revenue_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/revenue_pie%2C_... And here's a graph of federal spending -- https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_... In theory the payroll taxes from the first picture completely cover the spending on social security/unemployment insurance -- (and this is currently the case) -- so including that category in the total federal outlays is a little disingenuous when making an argument about too much federal spending/taxation if you don't intend to cut that source of federal spending/taxation ... If what you say is true that the issue with u.s. infrastructure is entirely the result of too much money going to federal tax authority and not enough to local tax authority -- then to make more dollars from the federal budget available for local taxation you are going to need to do one of the following in order of which action affects the largest monetary amounts: - argue for reducing payroll taxes and cutting social security benefits - argue for reducing federal healthcare spending - argue for reducing tax expenditures https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/taxexpenditures_discretionary_barchart_6.11.15.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/taxexpenditures... - argue for reducing the defense budget - and then way down there at the bottom, the entire rest of the federal budget which is typically vilified as "government waste" and out of control federal spending by people who adamantly refuse to consider any of the above funding priorities when making arguments that try to scapegoat federal spending for regional management failures ...
  - dgzl 9y ago
    It's my understanding that, from a constitutionalist perspective, states were meant to be sovereign and the Federal government was meant to have minimal presence. The idea is that states would be responsible for themselves only, through both success and failure.
nightski 9y ago
It's amusing there is so much misinformation on rural America on HN. You'd think it was mostly 3rd world by reading most of the comments on this post. I come from ND, which is an extremely sparsely populated state. However, don't let the rural nature fool you - per capita tax revenue was one of the highest in the nation. It's filled with rich farmers making more than many engineers here on HN. Most of the income comes from Oil & Farming but that excess money is being invested in developing a growing technology scene. I regularly visit CA/SF as I have clients there. It's a beautiful place, but many things about living in ND are much more attractive.
- adpirz 9y ago
  I feel like ND is a bit of an outlier though, I can try and find the data to back it up. I lived in rural MS for a while, and parts of it felt close to parts of rural India that I've visited.
- boomboomsubban 9y ago
  You're ignoring large chunks of your state, the reservations. They tend to better than the SD ones, but still have things like 50% unemployment.
- satsuma 9y ago
  ND is in a weird place thanks to the oil fields. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and while it was a pretty good living and I never felt like I was in a developing region, there were places that was closer to reality.
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but ND is a bit of an outlier. There are huge swathes of the once-prosperous rural south and midwest that are slipping into developing nation territory as their infrastructures degrade over time. Many of the prominent examples of a successful rural area are either very self reliant (parts of NH serve as good examples, but the opioid epidemic is taking a toll) or reliant on a single industry that might just up and leave (airline manufacturing or fracking come to mind).
- 9y ago
earlyriser 9y ago
Canada is bigger and with just 30 million people and the infrastructure is good. I live in a small city of 30k and sometimes I'm surprised how deteriorated the infrastructure is in big cities like Montreal (I also lived there for some years).
- ojbyrne 9y ago
  Having lived in both Canada and the US, it's a reasonable counter-argument, but I'm not sure "bigger" is really applicable to this argument. Most of Canada is empty, the population lives on a narrow strip of land near the US border. And having driven most of the trans-Canada, I'm not really convinced the infrastructure is good.
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  I'd argue that majority of Canada essentially lives on the equivilant of an US coastline. The US population is larger by a factor of 10 and while we have population hubs, our overall population is less centralized than Canada.
kevin_b_er 9y ago
The less dense areas don't or won't soon: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2017/04/when_libraries_close_timber_co.html http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2... The Republican philosophy means rapidly shrinking public services. These area already have super low taxes and the conservatives who moved there don't want to pay anything that might benefit someone who isn't them. Such is the price to pay when selfishness is the primary political philosophy.

tuna-piano 9y ago

Yes, it would be great if we could sub divide the large country into smaller areas, and give each of those areas control over most of the roads / bridges / etc. If spending and benefits are primarily local, shouldn't the decisions be as well?

accountyaccount 9y ago
I'd also imagine this could calm a lot of the "all our taxes go to the coastal elites" mentality and drum up support for local taxes (even though it's generally an errant stance).
dcdanko 9y ago
You mean like the States?
- accountyaccount 9y ago
  Sure, but there's no regional intermediary. Government scales from city, to county, to state... then straight to federal.
  - Balgair 9y ago
    Not always true. SF is both a city and a county, for example. Also, different states do it differently. Colorado has many cities that span county lines. Yes, going across the street in the same city means you now are under different laws. This isn't all that different than, say, a school district and it's tax base. We do also have regional systems, like the Mississippi/Colorado river watershed districts that help manage and maintain water usage in those areas. These inter-state issues have been cropping up for a long time (Bleeding Kansas, for an extreme example) and we mostly manage them pretty well and pretty silently. Turns out, the constitution actually does work alright.
  - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
    > Sure, but there's no regional intermediary. Government scales from city, to county, to state... then straight to federal. There are only 50 states. The median state is larger than Greece. The true problem is that the federal government is responsible for spending three times as many tax dollars as all the states put together. The county government knows they need to fix the bridge, but the feds took all the money the local taxpayers could spare and spent it on not-the-bridge.
    - breatheoften 9y ago
      How many of those federal dollars spent are for the military?
      - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        Federal Outlays: ~$3.8T Federal Defense: ~$0.7T
        breatheoften 9y ago
        Heres a graph of federal revenues -- https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/revenue_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/revenue_pie%2C_... And here's a graph of federal spending -- https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_... In theory the payroll taxes from the first picture completely cover the spending on social security/unemployment insurance -- (and this is currently the case) -- so including that category in the total federal outlays is a little disingenuous when making an argument about too much federal spending/taxation if you don't intend to cut that source of federal spending/taxation ... If what you say is true that the issue with u.s. infrastructure is entirely the result of too much money going to federal tax authority and not enough to local tax authority -- then to make more dollars from the federal budget available for local taxation you are going to need to do one of the following in order of which action affects the largest monetary amounts: - argue for reducing payroll taxes and cutting social security benefits - argue for reducing federal healthcare spending - argue for reducing tax expenditures https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/taxexpenditures_discretionary_barchart_6.11.15.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/taxexpenditures... - argue for reducing the defense budget - and then way down there at the bottom, the entire rest of the federal budget which is typically vilified as "government waste" and out of control federal spending by people who adamantly refuse to consider any of the above funding priorities when making arguments that try to scapegoat federal spending for regional management failures ...
- dgzl 9y ago
  It's my understanding that, from a constitutionalist perspective, states were meant to be sovereign and the Federal government was meant to have minimal presence. The idea is that states would be responsible for themselves only, through both success and failure.

nightski 9y ago

It's amusing there is so much misinformation on rural America on HN. You'd think it was mostly 3rd world by reading most of the comments on this post. I come from ND, which is an extremely sparsely populated state. However, don't let the rural nature fool you - per capita tax revenue was one of the highest in the nation. It's filled with rich farmers making more than many engineers here on HN. Most of the income comes from Oil & Farming but that excess money is being invested in developing a growing technology scene. I regularly visit CA/SF as I have clients there. It's a beautiful place, but many things about living in ND are much more attractive.

adpirz 9y ago
I feel like ND is a bit of an outlier though, I can try and find the data to back it up. I lived in rural MS for a while, and parts of it felt close to parts of rural India that I've visited.
boomboomsubban 9y ago
You're ignoring large chunks of your state, the reservations. They tend to better than the SD ones, but still have things like 50% unemployment.
satsuma 9y ago
ND is in a weird place thanks to the oil fields. I grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and while it was a pretty good living and I never felt like I was in a developing region, there were places that was closer to reality.
accountyaccount 9y ago
I don't disagree with you, but ND is a bit of an outlier. There are huge swathes of the once-prosperous rural south and midwest that are slipping into developing nation territory as their infrastructures degrade over time. Many of the prominent examples of a successful rural area are either very self reliant (parts of NH serve as good examples, but the opioid epidemic is taking a toll) or reliant on a single industry that might just up and leave (airline manufacturing or fracking come to mind).
9y ago

earlyriser 9y ago

Canada is bigger and with just 30 million people and the infrastructure is good. I live in a small city of 30k and sometimes I'm surprised how deteriorated the infrastructure is in big cities like Montreal (I also lived there for some years).

ojbyrne 9y ago
Having lived in both Canada and the US, it's a reasonable counter-argument, but I'm not sure "bigger" is really applicable to this argument. Most of Canada is empty, the population lives on a narrow strip of land near the US border. And having driven most of the trans-Canada, I'm not really convinced the infrastructure is good.
accountyaccount 9y ago
I'd argue that majority of Canada essentially lives on the equivilant of an US coastline. The US population is larger by a factor of 10 and while we have population hubs, our overall population is less centralized than Canada.

kevin_b_er 9y ago

The less dense areas don't or won't soon: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2017/04/when_libraries_close_timber_co.html http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2... The Republican philosophy means rapidly shrinking public services. These area already have super low taxes and the conservatives who moved there don't want to pay anything that might benefit someone who isn't them. Such is the price to pay when selfishness is the primary political philosophy.