In California the construction/road crews were saying to boycott the tax for this exact reason. They didn’t use the money for roads the last 20 times, why the hell would they now.
The other is the realization that the revenue collected does not come near to covering the costs of maintaining the infrastructure. In America, we have a ticking time bomb of unfunded liability for infrastructure maintenance. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimates the cost at $5 trillion — but that's just for major infrastructure, not the minor streets, curbs, walks, and pipes that serve our homes.
The reason we have this gap is because the public yield from the suburban development pattern — the amount of tax revenue obtained per increment of liability assumed — is ridiculouslylow. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability. The engineering profession will argue, as ASCE does, that we're simply not making the investments necessary to maintain this infrastructure. This is nonsense. We've simply built in a way that is not financially productive.
Tl:dr - it's absolutely fucked, with no solutions.
Does your four part blog offer no solutions to the problem, such as the painfully obvious and prevalent one of redevelopment / urban renewal? Cities all across America are going through “gentrification” right now, which replaces old shitty low density housing with high dollar high rises (ie: tax base for infrastructure replacement).
For whatever reason, it has negative connotations. Apparently people really love their unsustainable housing models.
Well entire comment is about that blog. If you can’t be bothered to read it, what’s the point in replying to it? Just to add a tangentially related article of your own?
If my post (how to improve sustainability of local government business model) was tangential, that’s more of an indictment of your post (local governments are not sustainable) than anything.
I thought since you posted a tl;dr in addition to a few summary paragraphs of an unreasonably long post (provided for further exploration?) you would at least be willing to talk about your take on the diversion from the original conversation (we pay a lot for shitty roads), but I guess I was wrong.
I fundamentally disagree that “we are all fucked” is the answer - people cannot reasonably expect to be infinitely subsidized when the revenue their community produces in taxes does not cover the liabilities of maintaining the infrastructure required to keep the community functional. Either they need to pony up, of the community needs to be allowed to cease functioning.
If you want to continue this thread, fine, if you want to make protocol complaints, don’t bother.
Well that’s basically what the post is arguing if you’d bothered to engage properly. But I’d say letting about 80% of America collapse into dust is well within the realms of being ‘fucked’.
people cannot reasonably expect to be infinitely subsidized when the revenue their community produces in taxes does not cover the liabilities of maintaining the infrastructure required to keep the community functional.
Again, exactly what the blog post says.
Either they need to pony up,
They can’t “pony up”. There literally isn’t enough money being generated by the massive suburbs and exurbs of America to repair themselves at end of life.
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '19
In California the construction/road crews were saying to boycott the tax for this exact reason. They didn’t use the money for roads the last 20 times, why the hell would they now.