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Yes, when the political organization that would look bad if it bankrupted itself chooses how to do their accounting, they choose methods that make it look like

Yes, when the political organization that would look bad if it bankrupted itself chooses how to do their accounting, they choose methods that make it look like they aren't bankrupt. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/12/7/the-lies-we-accrue https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/12/7/the-lies-we-ac... > It may be easiest to think in terms of personal finance. Imagine you purchase a car for $20,000 in 2015, but under a special promotion no payments are due on your bill until 2018. In what year did you incur the $20,000 bill? Most people would say 2015, the year you acquired the car. That’s the answer mandated under accrual accounting, a method of financial reporting required of all public companies by the Financial Accounting Standards Board. But many state and city legislatures disagree. They operate with the conviction that a bill is not incurred until the money leaves your bank account to pay it. So if you choose not to pay the bill for your car until 2018, for accounting purposes the bill will only appear that year. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/8/19/is-a-street-an-asset.html https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/8/19/is-a-street-an... > Current accounting practices do not bear any relation to the future cash flow or the actual financial health of the city. When cities take on obligations, they should be properly accounted for as liabilities, not assets. When the city uses debt to build new infrastructure, it is taking on the double liability of both the current debts payments and the future maintenance obligation. The tax base associated with these obligations needs to also be accounted for as a cash asset (think of it like an annuity) discounted over the useful life of the infrastructure. Then we would have an accurate account of the obligations (liabilities) of the community and how that compared to the tax base (assets) that needed to support them. In short, a true account.

xyzzyz 4y ago
There are plenty of suburban towns exhibiting exactly the same allegedly fiscally disastrous pattern of development, that are 50+ years old, and so the infrastructure debt should already catch up to them. Where are they? Strongtowns tells very plausibly sounding stories, but is short of actual examples. Where are all the places getting bankrupt by infrastructure costs? Or is it always “half a century from now, the costs will totally catch up with you”?
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  1) We've more than doubled our population in the past 70 years which has allowed us to fund our current developments. This trend has slowed considerably and is likely to slow even more. 2) Massive federal government investment in specifically this type of development. 3) state bailouts of failing municipal infrastructure. 4) we are already seeing it happen in the form of chronic under-maintenance: https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-broken-infrastructure-national-security-threat https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-broken-infrastru... > In Wisconsin, farmers are struggling to safely use modern equipment on roads that were built over 50 years ago. In Arizona, a century-old bridge partially collapsed last summer after a train derailed. In Florida, old pipes are leaking millions of gallons of sewage. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure > Civil engineers raise safety concerns as well, warning that many bridges are structurally deficient and that antiquated drinking water and wastewater systems pose risks to public health https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-wastewater-treatment-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-wastewater-treatment-fac... > Although the lifetime of a sewer system (50 years) is longer than that of treatment equipment (15 to 20 years), renovation needs of a sewer system can be more costly. An EPA analysis estimated that if 600,000 miles of existing sewer systems were not renovated, the amount of deteriorated pipe would increase to 44% of the total network by 2020.

xyzzyz 4y ago

There are plenty of suburban towns exhibiting exactly the same allegedly fiscally disastrous pattern of development, that are 50+ years old, and so the infrastructure debt should already catch up to them. Where are they? Strongtowns tells very plausibly sounding stories, but is short of actual examples. Where are all the places getting bankrupt by infrastructure costs? Or is it always “half a century from now, the costs will totally catch up with you”?

enragedcacti 4y ago
1) We've more than doubled our population in the past 70 years which has allowed us to fund our current developments. This trend has slowed considerably and is likely to slow even more. 2) Massive federal government investment in specifically this type of development. 3) state bailouts of failing municipal infrastructure. 4) we are already seeing it happen in the form of chronic under-maintenance: https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-broken-infrastructure-national-security-threat https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-broken-infrastru... > In Wisconsin, farmers are struggling to safely use modern equipment on roads that were built over 50 years ago. In Arizona, a century-old bridge partially collapsed last summer after a train derailed. In Florida, old pipes are leaking millions of gallons of sewage. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure > Civil engineers raise safety concerns as well, warning that many bridges are structurally deficient and that antiquated drinking water and wastewater systems pose risks to public health https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-wastewater-treatment-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-wastewater-treatment-fac... > Although the lifetime of a sewer system (50 years) is longer than that of treatment equipment (15 to 20 years), renovation needs of a sewer system can be more costly. An EPA analysis estimated that if 600,000 miles of existing sewer systems were not renovated, the amount of deteriorated pipe would increase to 44% of the total network by 2020.