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Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

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Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#121

Post by raxxorraxor »

digdugdirk wrote: post #95
sfifs wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should every small sub-section of geographies "pay-out" for themselves. The whole point of higher level organizing constructs (company, conglomerate, state, country) is we take systemically better decisions - which at a nation level will involve keeping people with different preferences united under the nation's big idea by supporting the diversity of preferences. If to take an example Google insisted every devel…

Imagine if Xerox allocated its budget to 90% PARC, and 10% everything else - without adjusting any staffing. There'd be some really cool, really fun stuff going on, and the people at PARC would love it. But without people making and selling copiers, the whole company would be out of business before long. The difference with suburbs/cities is the awareness, the expectation, and societal cost. People living in the subu…

Subsidized in a way that they get a disproportionate amount of services perhaps. But I would argue that is almost irrelevant. Costly services like schooling and transport infrastructure scales mostly by the amount of people.

You could of course calculate business taxes proportionally to the work suburbs deliver, but that would be quite dishonest.

You can always say that only the most densely populated place carries its own... but that isn't convincing. I am not from the US, but we have similar discussions here. That people have to live in the city if they want to live efficient. Problem is that few want to and I think at that point the discussion should be almost ended.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#122

Post by treis »

m0llusk wrote: post #2

Found the text version more compelling myself: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme

This pops up every couple of months or so. The numbers don't make sense and don't reflect reality. Infrastructure is ~10% of local government budget. Nobody is going bankrupt over that.

And AFAIK there's no city in existence where taxes & government expenditures are lower in the city compared to the suburbs. The expensive parts about government are mostly Schools & Criminal Justice. Both are significantly more expensive in cities on a per capita basis.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#123

Post by nemo44x »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #63
treeman79 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trouble is poor don’t pay taxes but consume a lot of services. If the middle class and rich who do pay the bills leave them a city can have a huge decline in coke from a small population decline.

This is straight up false. In local and state taxes, poor people pay a far higher percent of their income.

Over 50% of people pay $0 in income taxes. Yes, they pay sales taxes and generally property taxes indirectly as part of their rent - but they provide 0 in revenues as far as state, local, and Federal taxes are concerned.

The top 10% of income earners pay 80% of the taxes.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#124

Post by ghaff »

PakG1 wrote: post #114
foobarian wrote: post #17

I am biased because I quite like living in the suburbs, and get quite suspicious when some manifesto comes up that dictates I should feel bad for it. Why is the solution to live in better designed cities instead of better designed suburbs? Are cities still necessary given the modern conditions?

OK, now this makes me feel weird. I just realized that I must have no idea what a suburb is. I've only lived in Canadian cities, and I've spent extensive time living in Shenzhen and was stuck in Busan for almost a year due to COVID. I am now realizing that I must have never seen a suburb before because everything I imagined as a suburb must actually qualify as a city. What am I missing here, or is the US really just…

"Suburb" covers a lot of ground. There's the classical US cul-de-sac development of course. But people also use the term to encompass small cities and the periphery of larger cities that are mostly spread-out single family homes often generally lacking the ability to easily walk to stores, etc. Or largely exurban towns that may have a center but with homes often spread over a number of acres. (Which are still often considered urban by the US Census because they're basically within an hour or so of a larger city.)

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#125

Post by detaro »

ghaff wrote: post #124
PakG1 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, now this makes me feel weird. I just realized that I must have no idea what a suburb is. I've only lived in Canadian cities, and I've spent extensive time living in Shenzhen and was stuck in Busan for almost a year due to COVID. I am now realizing that I must have never seen a suburb before because everything I imagined as a suburb must actually qualify as a city. What am I missing here, or is the US really just…

"Suburb" covers a lot of ground. There's the classical US cul-de-sac development of course. But people also use the term to encompass small cities and the periphery of larger cities that are mostly spread-out single family homes often generally lacking the ability to easily walk to stores, etc. Or largely exurban towns that may have a center but with homes often spread over a number of acres. (Which are still often c…

wikipedia struggles a bit with the definition, but the pictures at the right show very clearly how large the range of what at least sometimes is called a "suburb" is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suburb

But for discussions like this you probably can assume that people mean the less-dense, residential-only types

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#126

Post by raxxorraxor »

davidn20 wrote: post #115
jelling wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect on a political and economic level. Fwiw I live in lower Manhattan, so I’m not saying this because I benefit from suburban subsidies. But if the country as whole subsidizes roads and services for a suburb of net positive income tax payers with otherwise low usage of welfare services, there is an economic logic to that. And obviously it gets votes. As much as I like living in a dense area and riding m…

I'm not an urban planner expert, but the logic makes sense to me. I look up my downtown condo vs a suburb home of comparable value, and I pay twice as much in property taxes. It's not hard to understand how density is inherently more efficient.

Wouldn't that mean that density in your case is less efficient since you pay more by a supposedly less valuable property?

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#127

Post by nemo44x »

incomingpain wrote: post #40

Why are Chicago, San Fran, NYC, Philly, etc so in debt? Bad government policies. Not because of some ponzi scheme. https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/wasted-tax-dollars/ $365K In Taxpayer Dollars To Teach People How To Fish? You can look at every one of these cities and see them making bad government policies that placed them in this situation.

It's because the cities are unbelievably corrupt. Bloomberg was the only non-corrupt mayor because he could buy his way to victory and didn't have to rely on the established political machinery to get there. But he was just 1 person and with the kinds of revenues NYC was bringing in, there was just so many opportunities to scratch backs. Other pols are so indebted to so many people/organizations/etc that corruption is going to happen. They can't rise to power without getting all these favors which are to be repaid once they acquire power.

How do you get power? You get the support of the political machine in your area. How do you get that support? You get the organizations that fund that machine on your side. How do you get those organizations on your side? You promise to make their investment in you pay dividends when you come into power.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#128

Post by alistairSH »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #113
alistairSH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, yes. The typical American suburb, even "dense" inner suburbs, often don't generate enough tax revenue to maintain infrastructure. The areas get built out with various subsidies from different levels of government; it's only 30 years down the road, when major infrastructure needs updated that the costs become apparent.

Why then do towns (which have similar population density to suburbs) not suffer from the same problem?

I'm not convinced your assertion is true in general. Picking some local towns, cities, and counties...

Shepherdstown WV, population of ~2000, population density 4,700/sq mi (bedroom community on outskirts of DC metro)

Fairfax County, VA, population of 1.1 million, density 2,800/sq mi (big, mixed suburban county)

Arlington County, VA, population 238,000, density 9,200/sq mi (much of it is very urban)

Charlottesville, VA (city) population 46,000, density 4,500/sq mi (small college city)

Anyways, the problem is sprawl, which can happen regardless of municipal label. Houston and LA sprawl and run into similar problems of upkeep as large counties like Fairfax Co VA.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#129

Post by kiba »

dionidium wrote: post #119
AlexandrB wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person making $120,000 is heavily benefiting from a public infrastructure that makes $120k/yr jobs possible. A ditch digger needs almost no infrastructure besides a shovel to do his job. An engineer needs schools and universities to educate his colleagues, roads and railways to deliver parts required for the product he's working on, and police services that deter theft of those products once they're built. Not to…

This is right. The suburbanite wants the benefits of agglomeration, but they want to define their existence within it so that they aren't exposed to any of its downsides. It’s a neat trick.

There are downsides to living a suburban lifestyle as it is typically designed. They just don't care or unaware.

Re: Why American cities are broke (2021) [video]

#130

Post by davidn20 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #126
davidn20 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an urban planner expert, but the logic makes sense to me. I look up my downtown condo vs a suburb home of comparable value, and I pay twice as much in property taxes. It's not hard to understand how density is inherently more efficient.

Wouldn't that mean that density in your case is less efficient since you pay more by a supposedly less valuable property?

Depends on your perspective. Yes, it's less efficient for me (individually) because I'm subsidizing suburbs and paying more taxes.

But, I was talking about the city, society, or the greater good. Whatever you call it. Higher density is more efficient and uses less resources per capita. Period. Same reason private planes are so bad for the environment.

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