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You shouldn't feel bad but it's more of a matter that your lifestyle is likely heavily subsidized because your town doesn't have the tax base (nor will they rai

You shouldn't feel bad but it's more of a matter that your lifestyle is likely heavily subsidized because your town doesn't have the tax base (nor will they raise your taxes) to support the infrastructure that's required to make suburbs function. If you were paying the true costs of living in the suburbs this wouldn't be an issue, but there's a high likelihood you don't. Cities will always be necessary because they are one of the most efficient ways (cheaper to build, maintain, and support) to account/house large amounts of people. If you want to live in other types of areas you should, ideally, be willing to pay the true costs. I can't link the article since I'm on a subway but Strong Towns is a good resource explaining how suburbs bankrupt themselves in the future since they won't be able to pay for the costly maintenance of their infrastructure (water, electric, roads, etc): https://www.strongtowns.org/ https://www.strongtowns.org/

honkdaddy 4y ago
I think it's difficult for someone to have much perspective on how much their own lifestyle is subsidized when the same can be said for the vast majority of people who enjoy benefits from the government, regardless of where they choose to live. Most people take more than they contribute, I don't think someone making $120,000 and paying $40,000 in taxes should feel any guilt for living in the suburbs when so many others can pay almost nothing in taxes and still enjoy huge amounts of government benefit.
- nishs 4y ago
  the american individualism is showing.
  - honkdaddy 4y ago
    I'm not American.
- arrow7000 4y ago
  So you admit that living in the suburbs is like being on welfare?
  - honkdaddy 4y ago
    If you want to look at that way, sure. The point I'm making is that it's not a particularly interesting or descriptive way to look at society.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  No one who pays "almost nothing in taxes" enjoys huge amounts of anything. Except maybe the actual rich with their tax avoidance games, but actual poverty fucking sucks and whatever meager benefits you manage to access don't change that.
  - honkdaddy 4y ago
    The people we call rich pay the majority of taxes. >In 2019, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $612 billion in income taxes while the bottom 90 percent paid $461 billion in income taxes. [1] You're right though, poverty does absolutely suck and realistically nobody's 'enjoying' EBT or assisted housing or whatever benefit they receive. The point I was trying to make is that poor people shouldn't feel badly for contributing less to the pie any more than 1%ers should feel righteous for contributing more. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/ https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income...
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  The person making $120,000 is heavily benefiting from a public infrastructure that makes $120k/yr jobs possible. A ditch digger needs almost no infrastructure besides a shovel to do his job. An engineer needs schools and universities to educate his colleagues, roads and railways to deliver parts required for the product he's working on, and police services that deter theft of those products once they're built. Not to mention a consumer base with enough money to afford the product in question.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    This is right. The suburbanite wants the benefits of agglomeration, but they want to define their existence within it so that they aren't exposed to any of its downsides. It’s a neat trick.
    - kiba 4y ago
      There are downsides to living a suburban lifestyle as it is typically designed. They just don't care or unaware.
  - Mirioron 4y ago
    And the ditch digger requires the engineer to tell him where to dig. Digging a hole for no reason isn't very beneficial. Even if you take away this public infrastructure you would get private infrastructure in its stead.
    - foobarian 4y ago
      There is no more ditch digger of old. They now use $1M excavators that are probably leased from a mega-corp that purchased it from another mega-corp.
      - Mirioron 4y ago
        Of course there are ditch diggers. You can't dig everything with a machine.
sfifs 4y ago
Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state, country) is we take systemically better decisions - which at a nation level will involve keeping people with different preferences united under the nation's big idea by supporting the diversity of preferences. If to take an example Google insisted every development be independently paying out immediately, there wouldn't be any Maps, Docs, Drive... If there was a similar insistance by Xerox, probably no personal computing. Amd even at a state level, even in the US, there are states that pay more to the nation and there are states that get more. In the rest of the world - particularly in Asia, we just consider this support costs for maintaining nationhood.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  Maybe they shouldn't pay out for themselves, but we should at least be aware of the costs so we can collectively plan and prioritize accordingly. The same groups/organizations you named will often end activities or sub-groups that have a cost above a certain threshold. I believe the overall intent here is to show the true cost of suburbs and evaluate if it's a pattern that cities can keep supporting. Ie, is the desire to live in the conditions suburbs create worth the cost of those arrangements?
- davidn20 4y ago
  The problem with that analogy is, suburbs doesn't benefit anyone besides the people living in them. So, by that logic, they should sustain themselves. Maps, Docs, and etc provide value to people outside themselves.
  - jelling 4y ago
    This is incorrect on a political and economic level. Fwiw I live in lower Manhattan, so I’m not saying this because I benefit from suburban subsidies. But if the country as whole subsidizes roads and services for a suburb of net positive income tax payers with otherwise low usage of welfare services, there is an economic logic to that. And obviously it gets votes. As much as I like living in a dense area and riding my bike, the rise of the YouTube educated urban planner has led to a lot conclusions that aren’t particularly sound. Doing a flaw P&L on a small town and deciding, in so many words, that it shouldn’t exist is peak smugness.
eschulz 4y ago
I think an article you may be referring to is the in-depth Strong Towns series that analyzes Galesburg, Illinois. Galesburg is by no means a suburb, and in many ways it's more comparable to a big city since it dominates its county and has little suburbs of its own. I think the assessment was that Galesburg officials are making incredibly unfortunate and wasteful decisions, but the good news is that there are examples of better financial choices they can make going forward. However, if another article on this subject comes to mind I'd appreciate to know what it is, once you're off the train of course.
causi 4y ago
I don't think his conclusions are great if you're working based off his examples. Like he brings up an example of a small neighborhood that, if it paid for its own road maintenance, would have to raise property taxes by 46% like that would be more than a mild inconvenience for the privilege of not living in a human hive.
- laverya 4y ago
  If it paid for its own road maintenance, and no other services such as water or sewer, they would need a 46% property tax increase just to cover that one thing.
  - causi 4y ago
    I'd be willing and able to pay quintuple my current property tax to keep the number of times I hear a car horn on my commute at one or two a week instead of one every ten seconds. Lots of other people are the same. An increase in cost of living in suburbs would be annoying but far from the "suburbs are a grotesque impossibility" stance of Charles Marohn.

honkdaddy 4y ago

I think it's difficult for someone to have much perspective on how much their own lifestyle is subsidized when the same can be said for the vast majority of people who enjoy benefits from the government, regardless of where they choose to live. Most people take more than they contribute, I don't think someone making $120,000 and paying $40,000 in taxes should feel any guilt for living in the suburbs when so many others can pay almost nothing in taxes and still enjoy huge amounts of government benefit.

nishs 4y ago
the american individualism is showing.
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  I'm not American.
arrow7000 4y ago
So you admit that living in the suburbs is like being on welfare?
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  If you want to look at that way, sure. The point I'm making is that it's not a particularly interesting or descriptive way to look at society.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
No one who pays "almost nothing in taxes" enjoys huge amounts of anything. Except maybe the actual rich with their tax avoidance games, but actual poverty fucking sucks and whatever meager benefits you manage to access don't change that.
- honkdaddy 4y ago
  The people we call rich pay the majority of taxes. >In 2019, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid $612 billion in income taxes while the bottom 90 percent paid $461 billion in income taxes. [1] You're right though, poverty does absolutely suck and realistically nobody's 'enjoying' EBT or assisted housing or whatever benefit they receive. The point I was trying to make is that poor people shouldn't feel badly for contributing less to the pie any more than 1%ers should feel righteous for contributing more. [1] https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/ https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income...
AlexandrB 4y ago
The person making $120,000 is heavily benefiting from a public infrastructure that makes $120k/yr jobs possible. A ditch digger needs almost no infrastructure besides a shovel to do his job. An engineer needs schools and universities to educate his colleagues, roads and railways to deliver parts required for the product he's working on, and police services that deter theft of those products once they're built. Not to mention a consumer base with enough money to afford the product in question.
- dionidium 4y ago
  This is right. The suburbanite wants the benefits of agglomeration, but they want to define their existence within it so that they aren't exposed to any of its downsides. It’s a neat trick.
  - kiba 4y ago
    There are downsides to living a suburban lifestyle as it is typically designed. They just don't care or unaware.
- Mirioron 4y ago
  And the ditch digger requires the engineer to tell him where to dig. Digging a hole for no reason isn't very beneficial. Even if you take away this public infrastructure you would get private infrastructure in its stead.
  - foobarian 4y ago
    There is no more ditch digger of old. They now use $1M excavators that are probably leased from a mega-corp that purchased it from another mega-corp.
    - Mirioron 4y ago
      Of course there are ditch diggers. You can't dig everything with a machine.

sfifs 4y ago

Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state, country) is we take systemically better decisions - which at a nation level will involve keeping people with different preferences united under the nation's big idea by supporting the diversity of preferences. If to take an example Google insisted every development be independently paying out immediately, there wouldn't be any Maps, Docs, Drive... If there was a similar insistance by Xerox, probably no personal computing. Amd even at a state level, even in the US, there are states that pay more to the nation and there are states that get more. In the rest of the world - particularly in Asia, we just consider this support costs for maintaining nationhood.

orthecreedence 4y ago
Maybe they shouldn't pay out for themselves, but we should at least be aware of the costs so we can collectively plan and prioritize accordingly. The same groups/organizations you named will often end activities or sub-groups that have a cost above a certain threshold. I believe the overall intent here is to show the true cost of suburbs and evaluate if it's a pattern that cities can keep supporting. Ie, is the desire to live in the conditions suburbs create worth the cost of those arrangements?
davidn20 4y ago
The problem with that analogy is, suburbs doesn't benefit anyone besides the people living in them. So, by that logic, they should sustain themselves. Maps, Docs, and etc provide value to people outside themselves.
- jelling 4y ago
  This is incorrect on a political and economic level. Fwiw I live in lower Manhattan, so I’m not saying this because I benefit from suburban subsidies. But if the country as whole subsidizes roads and services for a suburb of net positive income tax payers with otherwise low usage of welfare services, there is an economic logic to that. And obviously it gets votes. As much as I like living in a dense area and riding my bike, the rise of the YouTube educated urban planner has led to a lot conclusions that aren’t particularly sound. Doing a flaw P&L on a small town and deciding, in so many words, that it shouldn’t exist is peak smugness.

eschulz 4y ago

I think an article you may be referring to is the in-depth Strong Towns series that analyzes Galesburg, Illinois. Galesburg is by no means a suburb, and in many ways it's more comparable to a big city since it dominates its county and has little suburbs of its own. I think the assessment was that Galesburg officials are making incredibly unfortunate and wasteful decisions, but the good news is that there are examples of better financial choices they can make going forward. However, if another article on this subject comes to mind I'd appreciate to know what it is, once you're off the train of course.

causi 4y ago

I don't think his conclusions are great if you're working based off his examples. Like he brings up an example of a small neighborhood that, if it paid for its own road maintenance, would have to raise property taxes by 46% like that would be more than a mild inconvenience for the privilege of not living in a human hive.

laverya 4y ago
If it paid for its own road maintenance, and no other services such as water or sewer, they would need a 46% property tax increase just to cover that one thing.
- causi 4y ago
  I'd be willing and able to pay quintuple my current property tax to keep the number of times I hear a car horn on my commute at one or two a week instead of one every ten seconds. Lots of other people are the same. An increase in cost of living in suburbs would be annoying but far from the "suburbs are a grotesque impossibility" stance of Charles Marohn.