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The results of multiple studies have validated this claim: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53dd6676e4b0fedfbc26ea91/t/64a5d3d95a23d464c647013c/168858927

• bitcurious 3y ago
  I’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 ago
    Subsidies 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 ago
    They 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 ago
      long 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      Old 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 ago
        lots are the same size today, or maybe slightly smaller. back then everone had a garden which took up space.
• marcusverus 3y ago
  So 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 ago
    It 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 ago
      City dwellers are taxed more in terms of density of infrastructure. Lots of people using less infrastructure and paying more taxes in aggregate.
  • zrn900 3y ago
    Wasting housing and space makes being the net recipient of infrastructure taxes a net negative to entire society, an extravaganza.
• someguydave 3y ago
  assuming 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?