Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments • Hacker News Board

Re: Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments

#171

Post by adolph » Sun, Jan 15, 2017, 5:06 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #148

adolph wrote: post #45

I don't understand the author's argument. Is it "spiff up the 'poor' neighborhoods so the inhabitants will pay more property taxes?" When I look at the map, it looks like most of the city is lightly in the red and it has several extremely red areas which may drive most of the losses. What is driving those? Are they stadiums or large government facilities that aren't taxable? Or maybe middle-aged neighborhoods with se…

The town he's using as a case study is Lafayette, Louisiana. You can just pull it up on Google Maps to see what he's talking about. From what I can see, the largest building in the town is a Wal-mart. The argument is that improving neighborhood infrastructure will tend to improve housing values; that's noncontroversial. Increased housing values implies increased property tax; that's axiomatic. Poorer neighborhoods ar…

Ok, so you read it as "spiff up the 'poor' neighborhoods so the inhabitants will pay more property taxes" too.

I did pull it up on Google maps and visited a few random addresses on the Sherrif's property tax lookup page, etc. The orientation of the red-green graphic doesn't seem to be north-south and it isn't clear what is driving the large red areas.

Re: Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments

#172

Post by treehau5 » Mon, Jan 16, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #167

treehau5 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry I am late responding, I am talking about neither of the two, but rather, the Orthodox Church.

Oh. Well the Anglican church seemed more plausible in the context of early America.

In the context of America, you are certainly correct. Anglican is a good example!

Re: Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments

#173

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Jan 17, 2017, 2:29 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #170

emodendroket wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HRE probably had the best claim next to the Byzantines to being the true successors to Rome, but of course in the US they were a lot more interested in the Roman republic than the dominate.

The HRE had a very tenuous claim. They didn't even use the name until hundreds of years in, and most of their emperors were not crowned by any popes. Their claim was basically that the HRE was a successor to East Francia, which lands had been part of the Carolingian Empire, which had been ruled by Charlemagne, who had been crowned emperor by the pope in attempt to stake out his own very tenuous claim to be the contin…

Yeah, I agree, but the late Roman Empire was almost mostly Germanic barbarians so you can see the continuity easily enough. You might call it tenuous but it's still a better claim than most.

As an aside, that aphorism about the Holy Roman Empire is so well-known that it has the unfortunate trait of being spouted by people who know nothing else about the topic (not that I'm accusing you of that, if it sounds that way).

Re: Poor Neighborhoods Make the Best Investments

#174

Post by eric-h » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 9:11 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #155

vidarh wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that basis of that fascination was also part of the reason for the rise of neoclassisism. Greece and the Roman Republic and Empire came to be seen as purer, grander and more refined past, which drove a lot of effort into re-discovering information about them, which led to an increased interest in archeology, and eventually to things like neoclassism. Dictators and radicals alike looked for lessons, and found them…

The HRE probably had the best claim next to the Byzantines to being the true successors to Rome, but of course in the US they were a lot more interested in the Roman republic than the dominate.

Good point about the Roman republic.

As to being a true successor, recall that the Holy Roman Empire was famously neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

The "Byzantine Empire" is equally a misnomer. Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium-- renaming it "New Rome"--for defensive and commercial reasons. The Roman Empire itself remained. The notion that the "Byzantine Empire" was a successor to the Roman may arise from the fact that the eastern parts of the empire had always used Greek as the language of administration and as a lingua franca. Greek was barely known in the West from the fall of the eastern empire (ca. 476) to the Renaissance, when Greek scholars came to Italy as the eastern empire was contracting.

Given the Roman Empire's survival until 1453, the fall of Constantinople, a claim of succession is best made by the Russian Empire. Their Orthodox religion and Cyrillic alphabet were clearly derived from Greek Orthodoxy and the Greek alphabet.