7 ms·

How about: US citizens saved $34B by not having to stay in the highest COL areas? Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers?

by sqrt17 6y ago

threatofrain 6y ago
We don't have to sympathize with rent-seekers necessarily, but I would wonder if the rest of the city can move as adaptively to wherever opportunity beckons, and whether NY can downscale their city services accordingly.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  It serves as a cautionary tale when your budget isn’t as agile as those who make up the tax base.
  - iratewizard 6y ago
    In a lot of ways, city infrastructure investment is a ponzi scheme with one layer of abstraction.
ABCLAW 6y ago
>Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers? I don't really think this is about sympathizing with rent-seekers. Cities invest in infrastructure to cover anticipated service delivery well before it's due, and the financing for doing so is a multi-decade affair. Before you complain, this includes things like providing running water, roads that are paved, etc. Really core essential pieces of making a city work. If your tax base moves to suburbs or just plain leaves the city, the city is still on the hook for those payments, so it results in dramatically cut services or increased taxes on residents. The flight of some of the tax base incentivizes the flight of many, resulting in further cuts to maintenance contracts, preventative work, and the general crumbling of infrastructure. Sometimes this can be gracefully managed by planned downsizing and renegotiating deals with vendors and financiers. In other cases, this doesn't occur and the city simply... dies. While the US is very young and doesn't have many large examples of this, Flint and Detroit come to mind.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  "While the US is very young ".... What's that? By what measure? It's one of the oldest continuous governments out there.
  - neckardt 6y ago
    The government may be one of the older ones, but many cities are far, far older. Many cities in Europe have been around for thousands of years.
    - pc86 6y ago
      With the same tax structures they have now? Big shifts in governance tend to reset things like municipal bonds and the like.
    - simonh 6y ago
      Sure, but their current industrial era infrastructure isn’t thousand of years old. Most of it is no older than the infrastructure in the US. Compare the size of London now with 200 years ago.
- bluedino 6y ago
  >> While the US is very young and doesn't have many large examples of this, Flint and Detroit come to mind. You mean “most of the rust belt”
  - ABCLAW 6y ago
    Kinda. The decay of communities is one thing, but the death spiral associated with municipal infrastructure projects and tax bases is another. A small town might invest in a bioreactor to reclaim solids for resale from their wastewater service at a cost of 5 million dollars, but that'll pale in comparison with the construction of multiple new subway extensions at a price in the billions.
    - bluedino 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gnicholas 6y ago
The article was ambiguous about what the $34B was a measure of (income of the departing residents or the tax income generated by the income of the departing residents). But the underlying paper makes it clear that it's the former. So it's not accurate to say "US citizens saved $34B...". That was their aggregate income, which is still subject to the same federal taxes no matter where in the US they moved. They would have saved on state and local taxes, depending on the rates of their new home jurisdictions.
CydeWeys 6y ago
The average New Yorker has a mere one-third of the carbon emissions as the average American. This is really bad for the climate overall. Dense city living is very efficient; living in the suburbs and driving everywhere is not. NYC is the densest city we have.
- pc86 6y ago
  I'm not sure there are enough NYers for this to noticeably impact the carbon emissions of the eastern seaboard, let alone the world as a whole.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    And yet you add up lots of small numbers and they end up turning into a big number that destroys the planet, so the small numbers do matter too. It's the total annual carbon emission that determines the fate of our planet, and this kind of pattern of people switching to higher-carbon lifestyles is bad, especially since the pattern isn't exclusively happening to NYC but broadly to lots of cities. Add up all the cities it's happening to and it absolutely does impact the carbon emissions of the planet.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
  Live in the city for the sake of nature you will never experience because you live in a city.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    We're not walled in here, you know. And it's not nature that matters per se but rather having a habitable planet. You're confusing issues here.
    - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
      Okay feel free to stay where you are then.
- 6y ago

How about: US citizens saved $34B by not having to stay in the highest COL areas? Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers?

by sqrt17 6y ago

How about: US citizens saved $34B by not having to stay in the highest COL areas? Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers?

threatofrain 6y ago

We don't have to sympathize with rent-seekers necessarily, but I would wonder if the rest of the city can move as adaptively to wherever opportunity beckons, and whether NY can downscale their city services accordingly.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
It serves as a cautionary tale when your budget isn’t as agile as those who make up the tax base.
- iratewizard 6y ago
  In a lot of ways, city infrastructure investment is a ponzi scheme with one layer of abstraction.

ABCLAW 6y ago

>Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers? I don't really think this is about sympathizing with rent-seekers. Cities invest in infrastructure to cover anticipated service delivery well before it's due, and the financing for doing so is a multi-decade affair. Before you complain, this includes things like providing running water, roads that are paved, etc. Really core essential pieces of making a city work. If your tax base moves to suburbs or just plain leaves the city, the city is still on the hook for those payments, so it results in dramatically cut services or increased taxes on residents. The flight of some of the tax base incentivizes the flight of many, resulting in further cuts to maintenance contracts, preventative work, and the general crumbling of infrastructure. Sometimes this can be gracefully managed by planned downsizing and renegotiating deals with vendors and financiers. In other cases, this doesn't occur and the city simply... dies. While the US is very young and doesn't have many large examples of this, Flint and Detroit come to mind.

CalRobert 6y ago
"While the US is very young ".... What's that? By what measure? It's one of the oldest continuous governments out there.
- neckardt 6y ago
  The government may be one of the older ones, but many cities are far, far older. Many cities in Europe have been around for thousands of years.
  - pc86 6y ago
    With the same tax structures they have now? Big shifts in governance tend to reset things like municipal bonds and the like.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Sure, but their current industrial era infrastructure isn’t thousand of years old. Most of it is no older than the infrastructure in the US. Compare the size of London now with 200 years ago.
bluedino 6y ago
>> While the US is very young and doesn't have many large examples of this, Flint and Detroit come to mind. You mean “most of the rust belt”
- ABCLAW 6y ago
  Kinda. The decay of communities is one thing, but the death spiral associated with municipal infrastructure projects and tax bases is another. A small town might invest in a bioreactor to reclaim solids for resale from their wastewater service at a cost of 5 million dollars, but that'll pale in comparison with the construction of multiple new subway extensions at a price in the billions.
  - bluedino 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

gnicholas 6y ago

The article was ambiguous about what the $34B was a measure of (income of the departing residents or the tax income generated by the income of the departing residents). But the underlying paper makes it clear that it's the former. So it's not accurate to say "US citizens saved $34B...". That was their aggregate income, which is still subject to the same federal taxes no matter where in the US they moved. They would have saved on state and local taxes, depending on the rates of their new home jurisdictions.

CydeWeys 6y ago

The average New Yorker has a mere one-third of the carbon emissions as the average American. This is really bad for the climate overall. Dense city living is very efficient; living in the suburbs and driving everywhere is not. NYC is the densest city we have.

pc86 6y ago
I'm not sure there are enough NYers for this to noticeably impact the carbon emissions of the eastern seaboard, let alone the world as a whole.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  And yet you add up lots of small numbers and they end up turning into a big number that destroys the planet, so the small numbers do matter too. It's the total annual carbon emission that determines the fate of our planet, and this kind of pattern of people switching to higher-carbon lifestyles is bad, especially since the pattern isn't exclusively happening to NYC but broadly to lots of cities. Add up all the cities it's happening to and it absolutely does impact the carbon emissions of the planet.
Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
Live in the city for the sake of nature you will never experience because you live in a city.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  We're not walled in here, you know. And it's not nature that matters per se but rather having a habitable planet. You're confusing issues here.
  - Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
    Okay feel free to stay where you are then.
6y ago