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Austin has 3x higher prop tax rates than Lafayette. El Paso 4x higher. If only talk about their cherry-picked examples, so bankrupt cities go bankrupt? News at

Austin has 3x higher prop tax rates than Lafayette. El Paso 4x higher. If only talk about their cherry-picked examples, so bankrupt cities go bankrupt? News at 11. Austin is a good counter example. It’s large and spread out, not much density. It’s just got 3-4x higher property taxes and highly productive economically.

enragedcacti 4y ago
> It’s just got 3-4x higher property taxes and highly productive economically My point is that Austin is cherry-picked. If we need a huge city with a dense urban center, high property taxes, and high economic productivity to prove low density suburban development is viable then maybe we still have a problem. If we broke out Austin into smaller sections we would likely find large portions of the city would be completely unable to sustain themselves. Just because the urban portion can out-fund the problem (for now?) doesn't mean there isn't a fundamental issue. For every Austin there are dozens of Lafayettes. I can think of a dozen towns near me that have similar size, density, and tax bases and who are almost certainly running a budget that doesn't account for long term liabilities (which is how publicly traded companies in America are mandated to do their accounting, for example). You can look at their case studies[1] for different types of developments and you can look at municipal budgets and see that it doesn't line up, we just haven't been around long enough to see what happens when the party stops. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-2.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-pon...
mattcwilson 4y ago
3-4x higher sounds like a good bit of the distance between $1500 and $9200. Maybe you implicitly agree with the premise, and are mistakenly thinking TFA is talking about Austin when it’s not?
thedufer 4y ago
You're so hung up on Austin, which isn't at all relevant to this conversation. Austin has nearly an order of magnitude more people than even the largest towns under discussion here. Austin has a median income 40% higher and median home price 160% (!) higher. If anyone is cherry-picking it's the person who, when talking about typical cities in the US, picks an internationally-known large city instead of something actually representative.

enragedcacti 4y ago

> It’s just got 3-4x higher property taxes and highly productive economically My point is that Austin is cherry-picked. If we need a huge city with a dense urban center, high property taxes, and high economic productivity to prove low density suburban development is viable then maybe we still have a problem. If we broke out Austin into smaller sections we would likely find large portions of the city would be completely unable to sustain themselves. Just because the urban portion can out-fund the problem (for now?) doesn't mean there isn't a fundamental issue. For every Austin there are dozens of Lafayettes. I can think of a dozen towns near me that have similar size, density, and tax bases and who are almost certainly running a budget that doesn't account for long term liabilities (which is how publicly traded companies in America are mandated to do their accounting, for example). You can look at their case studies[1] for different types of developments and you can look at municipal budgets and see that it doesn't line up, we just haven't been around long enough to see what happens when the party stops. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-part-2.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2011/6/14/the-growth-pon...

mattcwilson 4y ago

3-4x higher sounds like a good bit of the distance between $1500 and $9200. Maybe you implicitly agree with the premise, and are mistakenly thinking TFA is talking about Austin when it’s not?

thedufer 4y ago

You're so hung up on Austin, which isn't at all relevant to this conversation. Austin has nearly an order of magnitude more people than even the largest towns under discussion here. Austin has a median income 40% higher and median home price 160% (!) higher. If anyone is cherry-picking it's the person who, when talking about typical cities in the US, picks an internationally-known large city instead of something actually representative.