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which is fine, if they are willing to pay the full cost of it. suburbia is massively subsidized.
by shortsunblack 3y ago
which is fine, if they are willing to pay the full cost of it. suburbia is massively subsidized.
- stronglikedan 3y ago> suburbia is massively subsidized That's a common argument that no one has been able to sufficiently prove.
- foxyv 3y agoThe results of multiple studies have validated this claim: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/t/64a5d3d95a23d464c647013c/1688589273552/Town+of+Nolensville+Road+Infrastructure+-+Sprawl+and+Fiscal+Solvency_080221_Dustin+Shane.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26e...
- bitcurious 3y agoI’ll admit that I merely skimmed the study, but as I read it states that local/municipal property taxes in many cases don’t cover the road infrastructure required to support those homes. To make the argument that they are subsidized you’d also have to factor in municipal and state income taxes.
- comte7092 3y agoSubsidies are about relative costs. Tax collection is an interesting thing to look at in addition, but ultimately if we are to determine whether the suburbs are subsidized, it would require analyzing cost to deliver city services per capita.
- throwway120385 3y agoThey don't cover them to the tune of many tens of percentage points where I live. It's to the degree that the state basically has to redistribute wealth from the cities to the counties where the roads are built. If the communities served by a road had to pay the full price of the road you'd see a lot of little 8-10 house hamlets with 10 million dollar bridges pack up and leave.
- throwaway14356 3y agolong ago in the netherlands the road in front of your house was your responsibility. You could agree with your neighbors to a crappy road but with loss of status and probably the value of the home. (The last remnant was the requirement to remove weeds. That was how I found out.)
- bluGill 3y agoI keep reading that claim. Then I look at old streetcar suburbs which have successfully a repaired thier roads over decades (including removing the old tracks). They have also added water, sewer, electric, phone, catv since being built. which is to say it doesn't pass the smell test. I don't know where the studies go wrong but something isn'c adding up.
- shortsunblack 3y agoOld streetcar suburbs are much denser than typical American suburb today due to increased setbacks, lot coverage rates and other factors. But yes, even streetcar suburbs get subsidized back then. The subsidy is just more productive in it opening economic mobility with cheap, carbon neutral transport, depending on your views on rail transport.
- bluGill 3y agolots are the same size today, or maybe slightly smaller. back then everone had a garden which took up space.
- marcusverus 3y agoSo the suburbs are net recipients of infrastructure taxes, which is a bad thing. Got it. Shall we also apply this to other government services? It would be kind of shameless to complain about suburbanites being the net-beneficiaries of one service, while expecting them to be net-contributors to literally every other government service in existence, right?
- someguydave 3y agoIt would be amusing if the end result of harassing net-productive taxpayers (suburbanites) is that they exit even further into wholly private areas where the government provides almost no services and nearly all the "local tax" is spent on upkeep of only the private community.
- oblio 3y agoCity dwellers are taxed more in terms of density of infrastructure. Lots of people using less infrastructure and paying more taxes in aggregate.
- zrn900 3y agoWasting housing and space makes being the net recipient of infrastructure taxes a net negative to entire society, an extravaganza.
- someguydave 3y agoassuming his numbers are correct, that shows that in one town in one state, the local taxes don't seem to cover the cost of infrastructure. But what about state taxes? Do they reimburse the locality? Federal funds?
- mdorazio 3y agoThe mortgage interest tax deduction by itself is enough to refute you.
- nightski 3y agoI'd imagine practically no one actually takes that because the standard deduction is more lucrative. Unless you live in a far above average priced home with a jumbo loan.
- kleinsch 3y agoMortgage interest deduction is capped at $750K of debt, conforming loan limits are $760K+, so doesn't apply to jumbo loans.
- walthamstow 3y agoUS suburbia's externalities are not properly priced in. Gasoline tax is 18c a gallon and hasn't changed since 1993.
- tzs 3y agoThat's federal gasoline tax. In most states there is also state gasoline tax on top of that which is usually quite a bit higher.
- comte7092 3y agoIt’s a fairly intuitive thing to understand, the suburbs require significantly more infrastructure per capita. More roads, power lines, sewer/water lines, etc. Just look at something as simple as trash pickup. In the burbs you have to travel a significantly greater distance per household.
- bluGill 3y agoBut most of the cost isn't distance it is time to empty the cans once there.
- namdnay 3y agoeasy: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ how much did you pay for emitting all that Co2?
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoIs it? Those same people work and pay taxes. If they couldn’t live in a city due to cost that city would have less revenue as a result of fewer employed people buying goods and services.
- NullPrefix 3y ago>work and pay taxes Implying that particular city job isn't subsidized. Bullshit jobs are mostly city jobs
- KerrAvon 3y agoAre you seriously suggesting that everyone in the USA should be forced to live in apartment blocks, or am I misreading you?
- gadflyinyoureye 3y agoYou’re misreading me. I replied to the idea that suburbs are subsidized. The view was that people should be taxed to off set their supposed subsidies. I don’t think the suburbs are really subsidized.
- compiler-devel 3y agoIt’s not though, this is one of those “we take less taxes if you pay mortgage interest” type arguments. That isn’t subsidizing.
- denimnerd42 3y agohardly a factor for most nowadays with the increase in standard deduction
- ska 3y agoAlthough it's not really that much of a factor these days, it effectively is equivalent to a subsidy. So is government backing of mortgages for that matter.
- someguydave 3y agothat's a strong statement to make across hundreds of thousands of different tax/cost situations in localities spread over all 50 states.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoI'm not an expert on municipal expenses, but I'd wager that it takes a pretty unusual cost situation to render it cheaper to pave/trench/replace more miles of road/pipe/wire and maintain more service entries to serve fewer people.
- bluGill 3y agoThis is compex. Rural gravel roads are likely cheaper per capite than paved roads, but they don't scale to the triffic of a suburb. A city street needs to be more expensive yet.
- shortsunblack 3y agoIt's not a 'strong statement'. It's a statement supported both by rationality (more inputs spread out across less users) and empiricism -- there's countless case studies arriving at same conclusions. Here's some from Strong Towns: i) https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/3/cobb-county-addicted-to-growth https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/8/3/cobb-county-add... ii) https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/27/a-texas-sized-pavement-problem https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/9/27/a-texas-sized-...