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Municipalities pay for their infrastructure {1} from land taxes. The per-unit costs of suburban maintenance {2} vastly outweigh the per-unit taxes colleected.
by SECProto 6y ago
Municipalities pay for their infrastructure {1} from land taxes. The per-unit costs of suburban maintenance {2} vastly outweigh the per-unit taxes colleected.
The inverse is true for dense urban units: per-unit costs for urban units are far lower than the per-unit taxes.
{1} (roads, sewers, water treatment and distribution, waste collection...)
{2} (repaving once every 20 years, repainting once a year, repairing sewer pipes every 40-60 years, water pipes every 80 (unless they were installed in the 50s-80s, in which case every 30), etc)
- Retric 6y ago1/2 of US local government spending is education and healthcare, infrastructure is a long way down the list. That almost completely destroys the small town argument because cities don’t need to pay for the education or healthcare of their suburban workers. An office building is a net gain where a the same space devoted to housing often costs the local government more in services.
- SECProto 6y ago? 0 percent of education is municipally funded (it's all provincially funded). Healthcare too is all provincially funded (though actually mostly funded by transfers from the federal government). Obviously I'm only speaking for all of Canada here, and can't speak for the US where it's likely more varied. Do you have some stats or links for municipal (or equivalent) tax raising/spending?
- Retric 6y agoThis discussion doesn’t really work in a global context as funding choices vary so much. Here is the US breakdown. https://usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2021USbl_22bc2n https://usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2021USbl_22bc...