Governments should compete for residents, not businesses • Hacker News Board

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#211

Post by bumby » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #206

hermannj314 wrote: post #16

I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase o…

>entitled to change a municpal culture simply because you got older I get what you probably meant, but this is a really strong statement. Our town is struggling with spiraling property taxes and it is forcing long-term residents out. I really feel for older people who've had decades of a social circle, have people to help them with things they can no longer do, etc. You can't move somewhere else and replicate that.

General question related to this: are the spiraling property taxes related to similarly spiraling home values?

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#212

Post by FpUser » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #180

FpUser wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Humans stopped being migratory about 12,000 years ago" Up until recently ( relatively ) a person could pretty much move to other country without much fuzz.

In the last 70 years alone we've added over 5 billion people. In the 1800s there were vast swaths of temperate, fertile land that were basically unclaimed. Moving around was no big deal at that scale. Now we have people everywhere (that doesn't suck; and even some places that do). We have social programs and expensive infrastructure. The world is very different now than even 100 years ago.

What is the end result? Something like you are to reside in this town an we'll let you out twice a year for vacation and XMas? Want to move to other city - there is a waiting list 10 years long.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#213

Post by gpm » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #189

How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the hig…

Great weather.

A virtuous cycle of good people attracting businesses willing to pay a premium for good people attracting good people.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#214

Post by ikiris » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #189

How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the hig…

... so why do you live there?

You choose it same as everyone else that's there now. Sounds like they compete well enough for you?

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#215

Post by dougmwne » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:20 PM UTC

thex10 wrote: post #99

dougmwne wrote: post #2

This is pretty silly because governments do compete for residents. Having jobs is a major part of attracting new residents unless you are a (sub)tropical paradise. A business that doesn’t employ anyone or consume any inputs from other state businesses is not going to be a particularly interesting business to incentivize.

> This is pretty silly because governments do compete for residents. I agree, but I also think many places compete poorly. I recently moved to a fast-growing (read: developer-friendly) region of the USA that often claims to be a "top place to live". And I might just leave, for many reasons: * The water tastes terrible. But I bought a filter so whatever... * The schools are bad. But I can try to lottery into the magne…

Yeah, I think you’ve got it. Poor competitors lose the competition. Sounds like you are better off somewhere else, especially if you want public transit.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#216

Post by indigochill » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:22 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #162

nhchris wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments don't come from the geography, but the people. Living in a small country myself, a place such as China, India, Indonesia, or Nigeria could send (and they would gladly come) enough people to outvote us on any issue 3x over, without even noticing they're missing anyone. We would simply cease to exist first as a sovereign people, and soon after as a distinct people at all, without any territory to call our o…

This is a perspective that's really hard for someone in the US to understand. When people here make the exact same arguments that you're making, it sounds xenophobic and dangerous. It's the stuff of Trumpism and MAGA. However, in the context of a true nation state, the exact same words can mean something very different. When we in the United States try to claim that immigration would hurt our sovereignty as a people,…

There are a couple interesting assumptions here:

1. There's such a thing as a true nation 2. That how long a person's family has lived in a region should entitle them to keep others out

The first one is bound to wander into circuitous philosophical debate, but I'm curious what the rationale is for the second.

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#217

Post by zamnos » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:22 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #206

hermannj314 wrote: post #16

I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase o…

>entitled to change a municpal culture simply because you got older I get what you probably meant, but this is a really strong statement. Our town is struggling with spiraling property taxes and it is forcing long-term residents out. I really feel for older people who've had decades of a social circle, have people to help them with things they can no longer do, etc. You can't move somewhere else and replicate that.

The other situation would be California's Prop 13, which locks down property tax rates to when you bought the house. It keeps long term residents in, but has had some unexpected consequences and its part in California's housing crisis is not to be ignored.

https://edsource.org/2022/californias-prop-13s-unjust-legacy...

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#218

Post by gretch » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

ikiris wrote: post #214

hintymad wrote: post #189

How does Bay Area fit in the narrative? From my personal point of view, Bay Area, where I live, offers very little to its residents: public schools have super low standards and low teaching qualities. Many of the schools use seemingly run-down portables while public schools in other states, such as WA, have amazing buildings and facilities. More than 1/3 of the families in the Bay Area choose private schools, the hig…

... so why do you live there? You choose it same as everyone else that's there now. Sounds like they compete well enough for you?

People often live here _despite_ the government, not because of it.

Great weather. 4 hours away from skiing. 1 hour away from the beach.

These things aren't attributable to the quality of the govt (except I will say that govt does do a decent job of preserving natural ecosystems)

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#219

Post by bell-cot » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #201

notch898a wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like this could be improved by mandating no more than 2x disparity between spending on kids in the same grade level. Disruptors can be kicked into the gladiator camps or emancipated if they think they're so independent on what they can do.

Actual measurement for most disruptions is really hard because it usually manifests in things like "Timmy was really distracting in class during the Math lesson". Quantifying that is difficult. Capping spending ratios would also be horrific for the US specifically because we implement many of our social welfare programs for kids through the schools: school lunches, speech therapy, etc. (incidentally, this overinflate…

Last I heard, average American per-student public school spending was ~$10K per pupil per year. Do free school lunches and a few hours per week with a speech therapist (or whatever a kid needs) actually add $10K to the annual cost of a pupil?

(And if "yes", could the problem mostly be fixed by (say) changing "2x" to "3x"?)

Re: Governments should compete for residents, not businesses

#220

Post by mcguire » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 8:25 PM UTC

kilgnad wrote: post #143

hermannj314 wrote: post #16

I've owned houses in two cities in my life. One called itself "A developer-friendly community" and the other "A healthy community" The cities were organized around their taglines. One was 300 years old and focused on parks, trails, conservancy, and community centers. The other a younger city focused on growth and sprawl, tax abatements, and new businesses. You should live where the government aligns with your phase o…

The problem with this is that the taglines enforce a theme even when the circumstances change. Your healthy community is experiencing homelessness and a housing affordability problem along with every "themed" community around you. Does it make sense to stick with the original theme? No. It doesn't. The problem here is that by owning property you buy into that theme. Any divergence from that theme is harmful to what y…

As AlgorithmicTime (now dead) wrote, American home ownership rates peaked in 2004 at 69%, fell to 64% in 2016, and are back up to 66%. (https://www.statista.com/statistics/184902/homeownership-rat...)

In California, it's about 56%. You gave to get San Francisco proper to get a minority and then it's still 38% (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocou...)