611–615 of 615 posts
> There are four full-service car washes in town, with a fifth on the way; three are bunched up on a mile-and-a-half stretch of Route 14. Social media complaints about car wash overkill spurred town leaders to take action. Four (or even five) doesn't sound that much? What's the actual problem here? How is a local politican supposed to determine what is the correct density of any particular type of service within her…
If it’s anything like the 3 that have opened in my town of 80k in literally the last year it’s because they’re huuuuuuge. The wash itself is 100+ft long, and tons of parking, vacuums, etc. Just one of those things takes up the space of 3 or 4 normal gas stations. The crazy thing is that after a small wave of initial enthusiasm, they hardly ever even have customers.
My hometown of 40,000 has five; one which replaced the only movie theater in the county (a one-hour radius) that closed at the end of 2020. The local government remarked the car wash will provide jobs. Three employees are needed, according to the "local" news. (Actually, the local newspapers were replaced years ago by a nationwide chain of "independent, regional" news sourcers.)
I'm glad I got away from that place. The most fun you could have on a Friday night was meeting friends at Walmart and then driving to an empty parking lot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Paying taxes is literally contributing to society. Owning land is not.
There are other things that are contributing to society that are not paying taxes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They are still types of businesses gravely affected by high property taxes and land value taxes Don't conflate two very different things. A business is affected by land value taxes to the extent that it uses expensive land (that's the point). A business that takes up zero land, such as one that can be run from the same building you live in, ipso facto pays zero land value tax.
> A business that takes up zero land, such as one that can be run from the same building you live in, ipso facto pays zero land value tax. Local bookstores, delis, cafes, specialty shops, and so on, (a) use "expensive land", and (b) are not, usually, run "from the same building you live in". I'm not talking about rural shops (those are a whole other thing, and die due to other reasons, like the economic decline and a…
Living over a shop like that is normal where I live, which is far from rural; I've been to many small cafes and similar that were clearly someone's (barely) converted home. Of course if you have dumb zoning it may make that impossible, but, uh, don't do that then.
> I'm talking about beloved shops in major cities
So what's over those shops if not living space?
> replaced by expensive real estate getting them demolished to build whatever luxury mega-crap, and driving up rents contributing to gentrification
"gentrification" is a spook. Making a place nicer is a good thing. The only reason nice places are unaffordable is because you build too few of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Credit card only" is a sure sign of money laundering: it's a way to game the cash vs credit ratio. (Edit: maybe "sure sign" is a little bit hasty, but I think the other possible reasons for a "credit card only" sign are actually worse morally than money laundering)
"Credit card only" meant everything have paper trail. Maybe some tax avoidance scheme, not money laundering.
Unless you advertise as credit card to outsiders but take cash as part of some scheme