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Comment by soyiuz | Hacker News Reader

Two footnotes on this article:

1. The problems it highlights can be reduced to low tax revenues. Our infrastructure is crumbling because we do not collect enough taxes to subsidize it. Things like roads and trains cannot (and should not) pay for themselves---they are a public good. The train might be empty at night, but the ability to take a train home prevents drunk driving, for example. One cannot put a monitory value on services like that, they speak to our collective quality of life. The SF transit situation is the direct consequence of a failing tax base. The wealth of the local tech industry is not "trickling down" to improve city infrastructure, in proportion to the industry's growth.

2. Re: the conversation about walk-ability of cities. The key concept here is density. We need to value density as it allows for more compact living. Instead, municipalities in places like the Bay Area consistently vote against new construction and against zoning laws that would allow for taller, more densely populated buildings/neighborhoods. The law of supply and demand says increase the supply of housing to make something affordable. This is not some mysterious process: there's simply no political will on the part of existing inhabitants to "devalue" their residences by increasing the supply in the housing market.

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> Our infrastructure is crumbling because we do not collect enough taxes to subsidize it.

That's just not true.

We have crumbling infrastructure because we refuse to prioritize it due to political dysfunction.

If youre a surgeon or a lawyer living in San Francisco, your marginal tax rate is 39.5% federal + 11% state. Over 50%. You also pay 8.75% VAT on a lot of common purchases and 1% property tax.

This is not a low tax environment.

Hong Kong has a 15% flat tax and yet they have vastly better infrastructure than we do. Singapore is a similar story. Even Istanbul, with per capita income and tax collection thats a small fraction of ours, has a great light rail system that puts Bart to shame. Istikal Street is incredible--imagine Market and Mission put together, and pedestrian only. It is a beautiful city.

So how do these places do it?

* They respect and prioritize infrastructure

* Their governments are less gridlocked

* They value density and walkability

* They have fewer NIMBYs, with much less power to obstruct

* They're less lawsuit-friendly. In the Bay every big infra project spends time and money fighting lawsuits.

* They have leaner bureaucracies. BART has tons of six figure salaries on the payroll for random adminstrative positions.

if you're a surgeon or lawyer (or any other kind of high end services professional) living in SF and making any kind of significant money, most of your earnings are probably not coming on a W2 in the form of a salary. you're probably a partner or a shareholder in a business and get a dividend or a distribution from the business as a K-1 or a 1099-DIV/INT, and your effective tax rate is going to be way, way lower than 50%, probably closer to 20% or below.

because you own part of the businesses a huge amount of your expenses are either deductible or simply covered by the business, which then deducts it from its earnings (which are probably getting passed through to you directly). lunch and some dinners, ambiguous trips to major cities, car lease, laptops, phones, christmas gifts, etc. also, a lot of people just straight up buy shit for their house on the business dime like nice TVs, furniture, etc. field audit? move it to the office.

sales (you call it VAT .. okay) tax is probably high, but it's optional, you don't have to actually buy anything. also, you can buy stuff in cheaper places, especially if you and own a second home in a lower tax area (which many people do).

Can you please share this magic method for lawyers and surgeons to somehow get paid at an effective tax rate of 20%?

uh, i just did. be a partner in a firm, not some guy on the payroll.

If you're a partner, you're either getting profit distributions that are taxed at ordinary income rates, or you're getting dividends that are taxed lower, but the corporation paid 35% tax on profits (plus state), which makes it much worse than just ordinary income rates.

The only real ways I'm aware of to get taxes much lower is capital gains, or perhaps real estate where depreciation "losses" defer a lot of taxes on your income.

But neither of those would really be available for partners in a law firm or medical practice.

So again, please elaborate on how partners get taxed at 20%?

Dividends and other distributions are taxed at normal income tax rates. You are likely thinking of long term capital gains taxes, which are something else entirely.

no, i'm not. distributions are taxed at 'normal' rates, but if you are receiving non-w2 income, the amount of things you can deduct from that income are far and away more varied and comprehensive.

Do you know how the operating costs for BART compare to comparable systems in the US and internationally? And how cost of new construction compares? My guess is that both costs are on the high side, but I don't know any details.

US infrastructure construction is routinely 3 - 10x more expensive [1][2][3] on a like-for-like basis compared to other developed nations. This is one of the biggest facts that even well educated people seem completely unaware of, despite it foundationally shaping the debate around infrastructure investment.

The primary cause appears to be the way the US solicits and manages infrastructure projects which leads to massive bloat and inefficiency.

[1] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...

[2] https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...

[3] http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2012-08-26/u-s-taxpaye...

> US infrastructure construction is routinely 3 - 10x more expensive on a like-for-like basis compared to other developed nations.

> The primary cause appears to be the way the US solicits and manages infrastructure projects which leads to massive bloat and inefficiency.

This is depressing. What can we, as voters or political donors or investors or entrepreneurs, do to fix it?

The US has well organized and effective political advocacy groups for a number of causes. For example, there's one whose sole focus is maximizing people's gun rights.

We need one for ending bureaucratic bloat, corruption, rent seeking and pork. A group whose sole goal is to fix government so we can get projects done cleanly and on time and at reasonable cost.

The problem is this is one of those issues that democracy has a hard time handling because it affects many people diffusely but almost nobody acutely.

Where do you get 11% state tax from? Every California state income tax calculator I've seen for $150k-200k puts it at around 7.4% - 8% (sliding scale due to how California state taxes work).

Not the lowest taxes still, but I'm bewildered as to where does some of this myth of the 10+% state income tax comes from.

Presumably he says 11% because the tax bracket for California incomes for $300K to $500K is 11.3%, and because he assume this is how much a surgeon in San Francisco makes. This does ignore the brackets, but he does note that he's discussing the marginal rate: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2015_California_Tax_Rates_and_E...

At a glance, this seems like a very reasonable estimate:

  How much does a Surgeon in San Francisco, CA make?

  The median annual Surgeon salary in San Francisco, CA is   
  $435,890, as of February 22, 2016, with a range usually 
  between $368,625-$517,331 not including bonus and benefit 
  information and other factors that impact base pay."

http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Francisco/surgeon-salary.html

Where you do get your $150K-$200K estimate from?

I was just using it as an example where the effective rate ends up nowhere near the rates people temd to talk about - I've seen a lot of prior talk about state taxes for engineers mentioning rates like that too, and did a quick lookup on online income tax calculators to make the point that effective state income tax rates in California are not as straightforward as looking up a % and quoting it.

Top marginal CA state tax rate appears to be 12.3%. $150-200k income is not surgeon/lawyer money in CA... think 400+.

The average lawyer doesn't make anywhere near 400+, even in San Fransisco.

And you're thinking star lawyers. Think countless thousands who also work as such...

>Hong Kong has a 15% flat tax and yet they have vastly better infrastructure than we do.

First, Hong Kong has such low taxes because the government makes most of their money by leasing and selling land. They don't need much to bring in as much tax revenue because of this. Their low tax rate has little to do with being more efficient or "prioritizing infrastructure."

Second, why are you using the marginal tax rate for San Fransisco? You should be using the effective tax rate which is much much lower than 50%.

The local government should institute a land value tax, then. That would bring in revenue, and have positive impact on the economy. (As opposed to almost all other taxes.)

Land value taxes are interesting, but if you look at the communities that implemented them in the era of Henry George, most of those communities have abandoned them because it's difficult to administer over the long term a taxation system that's quite different from the norm, and the benefits may be fairly mild.

Also, I think it taxes should try to be uniform across the nation. I find it smelly for Texas to try to attract business from California it worse, Kansas to steal businesses from Missouri by promising not just lower tax rates but effectively zero tax.

Why is it not OK for China PR to manipulate the RMB but it is OK for Texas to lower worker rights to attract business? And no, I don't believe in this "laboratories of democracy" bs. There are things in which uniqueness is good but there are other times when we need a standard (you know like the Constitution and the bill if rights).

Now, I'd be all for a low tax, maybe 0.1% (due annually) of property value so that someone who owns one million dollars of land and building will pay $1000 extra each year. I'd go further and say no exceptions (not even non profit or charity) just to illustrate a simple problem: we don't know how to do any redistribution.

Should this new tax go directly to the county government to spend as they wish? Should it go to the state so they can take money from Lawrence and spend it in Kansas City, KS? Should it go to the federal government so it can spend more in Iowa than the tax raised from Iowa? I am just bringing this up because I've thought about the fetish among some people that everything would be OK if the federal government just backed off and let the state governments take charge. The problem is it wouldn't really fix the problem. I don't think Divide and conquer really works like this because we haven't divided the problem enough. Our States are too big themselves.

I guess my main point is that as long as the tax rate is uniform across the whole system regardless of location, I could live with a small land/house tax not exceeding 0.1% of property value so that a person with a million dollar house pays $1000 each year. The problem is in how we spend this money. Does the money have to be spent in the same neighborhood? Town? County? State? Country?

On my street of 11 houses, three are occupied by people that had their companies relocated to Texas because it was a more business friendly state. (Two from Los Angeles area and one from New York City.)

At my company there was talk of moving it to Boston, but I refused to consider doing it.

The competition between states gives all of us more liberty to choose places that govern their states differently.

Yes. Though they should not have a race to who can give the biggest special flavours to well connected companies. It would be better if regulations higher up (eg federal level) could be set up in such a way that states would compete to who can give the best business environment for everybody.

Even 30-40% effective tax is A LOT. It hurts... and hurts more when I see how it's spent.

>BART has tons of six figure salaries

Six figures is table stakes for living in the Bay Area, and I certainly don't want to see the BART staffed by people who live so far away they don't even ride it.

Now that's an interesting question. How many (six figure) employees of BART ride the BART to work?

Singapore's income taxes are low, but they tax newly purchased vehicles at significantly over 100%.

Seems reasonable to me. They might come close to recouping the huge costs that cars actually cost.

> Re: the conversation about walk-ability of cities. The key concept here is density. We need to value density as it allows for more compact living.

Another thing that perhaps needs to be valued more is sound insulation. I currently live in an apartment in a dense, walk-able city in Europe. However, I'm tempted to buy myself a house and a car, because I'm so sick and tired of all the noise that comes from living in an apartment in a dense area (neighbors, construction nearby, drunk people late at night etc.). Without good sound insulation, I don't think density works, although maybe it's just me who are more sensitive to this than other people.

It's interesting that you say that. In an earlier conversation on density and walk-able neighborhoods, I seem to recall a number of people from Europe saying that noise wasn't as much of a problem as in dense parts of the US because of different construction traditions. (Europe is a diverse place, of course, so it might just be down to regional differences.)

That could be. It's especially renovations in the same building where I live that has been the problem here. I'm guessing this is a bigger problem (more renovations!) in a large building, than a small one.

Regarding renovations: whenever someone takes a rotary hammer to concrete, it will be fairly noisy no matter how good the sound proofing is. That sound will travel in the entire structure even if the building is 400 feet wide.

Any apartment or house old enough to have plaster walls will be much more soundproof. That stuff is dense and heavy and it's usually at least an inch thick, more than sheetrock/drywall.

Europe is a big place, I think the construction norms can differ too.

I was in some appartments in Nantes, France, and the windows could let you hear outside (so things like buses going by in the day). In my Tokyo apartment I hear police cars go by (actually, every Sunday I get the black cars from the fascists[0]).

I think there's some better sound isolation in France rather than Tokyo (at least in smaller appartments), but Japan also knows that making too much noise is pretty rude. Usually you're not allowed to play instruments in your place unless you got explicit permission when signing the contract (usually implies that the unit has better isolation). And you try not to hit the walls too often.

I think it's part "don't be a dick", and part "get used to it". It's likely possible to isolate better but it's likely expensive on smaller units (because of the space required).

Though honestly, even when I was in Texas suburbs, there's still noise from traffic and neighbors. It was easier to get peace and quiet though.

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyoku_dantai

Yes please. As someone who is the one making the noise and feels bad for neighbors, I really want better sound insulation.

I am renting a house which is much larger than I need just because I practice piano and don't want to disturb my neighbors. If not for this I would rent a place closer to work.

They make sound insulating and deadening foam. Put the piano in a small internal room and line the room with acoustic foam: http://amzn.to/1o9CGjb Living closer to work must be worth 2 of these for $160?

An electronic piano with headphones may even be an acceptable alternative.

No. Just no.

There are full acoustic/electric hybrid pianos with mechanical actions that have the ability to be used with headphones only.

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/musical-instruments/keyboards...

I actually had one of these and can tell you that unfortunately the technology just isn't there.

The action is the same but the way it reacts and sounds isn't, and at least for classical music, learning the nuances of the sound (and pedal!) is the hardest part..

That's a shame :-(. I've never played one myself but I definitely imagine it to be superior to most/all keyboards.

Why not? In a former life, I used such pianos.

The "make it sound like a wood-and-felt-and-wire piano" issue is solved. The "make the key action feel like a physical piano" is (based on my extensive side-by-side testing) close enough to solved that -if one's concerned about bothering the neighbors with the sound of your playing and one has the money- purchasing a good model is a no-brainer.

Yeah, things like http://www.rolandus.com/products/v-piano/ are absolutely competitive with acoustic pianos. Multiple acoustic pianos, in fact.

Sorry for accidental downvote. I have an electronic piano in my flat; it works well for managing noise levels outwith acceptable hours.

I actually have an electric piano as well and even though it has a mechanical action but it still doesn't come close unfortunately.

I guess I am relatively serious for an amateur but the piano is a very difficult instrument to master and so I just feel like since I have such a limited time to practice I rather make that time as effective as possible. That means playing on an acoustic and thus making a lot of noise sadly..

Yeah, foam doesn't really "soundproof" anything. Foam is normally for sound treatment, so you get less interference when making music for mixing / mastering / recording purposes. You need extra drywall / more insulation / sheetrock / mass loaded vinyl / wall decoupling to actually block sound.

This sort of foam isn't for soundproofing, but for reflection-proofing. If you treat your room with this and make noise, your neighbors will still hear it just as loudly as before, but inside your own room, the sound will have less reverberation and echoes, making it sound more focused.

For soundproofing you need dense materials with lots of mass. Things like mass loaded vinyl, rockwool sheets, or even full-on room in a room. It can get pretty expensive [0]

I agree with the other commentor, a nice digital piano with headphones, or speakers you can adjust the volume out of would be the best option.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Loaded-Vinyl-Square-Acoustic-Barrier/d...

There are two broad categories of approaches you use when dealing with sound. One is controlling sound transmission, and the other is shaping/controlling diffusion. In general these types of foams act as diffusers, which influences the sound inside the room, but have very little impact on sound transmission, which is what most people think of when they say 'sound proofing'. Dealing with sound transmission generally requires lots of mass, isolation, and careful attention of air-tightness. Think about how a thermos is constructed and you start to get the idea.

Honest question: can't you just get a high-quality digital piano and use headphones?

I'm not a pianist but I can tell the difference between the best sampled piano synths and a real piano so there's no doubt a pianist can too. Of course it's better than nothing but a musician could prefer living far from work than not having a real piano at home.

I actually have a high quality digital (Yamaha N1). It even has the same action as a grand piano. Unfortunately, every time I went to my lessons to play on a real grand I had practically no control. The pedal especially is completely different on a real piano.

Also there are just so much more sounds you can produce on a real piano. I know it's weird since it's a percussive instrument but for whatever reason the way you hit the keys makes a difference.

I use ear plugs, but that's not ideal of course. I used to live in a 200 year old brick building on the 4th story in a dense, walkable area and surprisingly it wasn't too bad. Now I live in a second story apartment in a much lower density city and the traffic noise is far worse than the human noise I used to hear.

Suburbia has the incessant sound of lawnmowers, leafblowers, and barking dogs.

As well as denser cities. In LA, it's daily. Each small patch of grass between sidewalk and street cut or weedwhacked and the blower comes out even if a broom would be quieter and only slightly less efficient.

Leafblowers are vile. I would take plenty of drunks walking by at 2 AM over a horde of leafblowers at 7 AM.

I used to live in Santa Monica, and it was only upon leaving that I realized how utterly wonderful their leafblower ban was. Of course, the diesel pickups in the alley behind my apartment were less fun, but I guess you have to choose your battles.

>The SF transit situation is the direct consequence of a failing tax base. The wealth of the local tech industry is not "trickling down" to improve city infrastructure, in proportion to the industry's growth.

I'm not sure this is true. The city budget has grown substantially, now ~$9B [1].

The problem is we don't spend it on transit infrastructure, and when we do invest, we get financially mismanaged projects like the central subway [2].

[1] http://modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/san-franciscos-i... [2] http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/covering-their-tracks-t...

The market more than doubled since 2005. An increase in the city budget from $5.3b to $9b is not that impressive in that context. They would get that if they simply held an unmanaged index fund. You would expect more growth in the bay area and better redistribution of the tax revenue.

Mismanagement of public funds is bad, agreed.

The city budget is a yearly flow of cash. You can't directly compare that to equity markets, when equity pricing is at its simplest the discounted future cash flow for eternity.

Good point. Still, the city budget is in some sense tied to the market. The unemployment rate almost halved since 2010. Per capita income almost doubled since 2000. Apple revenues alone tripled in the last five years. You'd expect the local municipalities to cash in on the taxes.

Cities can't impose local income taxes as it is politically difficult.. Prop 13 means they can't get money from increases in rents, and they don't want to build more anyway. As a result cities don't see the gains from booms in the way they would in other regions of the country.

Wow, the San Fransisco budget is around double the entire state budget for Oklahoma. If San Fran can't keep up its infrastructure with about 2x the budget per capita in around .3% of the land area, they're doing it wrong.

Salaries. Low in Oklahoma. High in San Francisco. Come back with the budget number in terms of median employee salary, and we might be able to start to compare the two.

I agree it's a tax revenue problem. However, as a CA resident living in the bay area with a tech salary, I can attest that _taxation_ isn't the problem. An unfortunate reality is that our budgets are not being spent well. In particular, BART has some serious high-cost issues. For one, the automated trains have operators whose total compensation is an average of $130k yearly. [1] There are terrible, ineffective managers, directors, and executives that are guilty of mismanagement and greed [2].

soyiuz, you are absolutely right: BART needs more money. It also needs new people and a radical overhaul to update a system operating on 40 year old designs and assumptions. ---- [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/07/are-bar... [2] http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23416601/barts-top-paid-worker...

Agreed! The cure for mismanagement should be more transparency and more algorithmic government (along with testing)---a topic for another conversation.

high cost issues are endemic to the bay area, not just to BART

About half that money is in their healthcare and other benefits plans. Worth keeping that in mind. They're not walking home with $130k.

I'm assuming you're from the US... The problem isn't a lack of taxes, it's where you guys spend it all.

fully agree with this (US native)

And when it is spent on infrastructure, the US leads most of the world in being the most expensive place to build public transportation, with projects often taking far longer. I blame corruption, poor governance and deep cultural disdain for organization and order.

Don't even get me started on the California decision to build HSR between SF and LA. What a joke that one is.

More amazing—a half century ago, the U.S. was undertaking some incredible public works projects.

Edit: sorry, I was continuing from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11356350

We spent four billion dollars for a train station. And then we raised ticket prices on the path train for a beautiful station nobody wants. Why?

> To win these concessions, Larry Silverstein took advantage of the Port Authority’s eagerness to show some progress on the site. He played hardball with the government from 2004 to 2006, a period of acrimonious negotiations between Silverstein Properties and the Port Authority over who would be responsible for what aspects of the site.

> His lobbyists were the best of the best. He hired Global Strategy Group, whose clients have included Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, to lobby for him, along with David Samson, who would go on to become the chairman of the Port Authority.

> Given the choice between making Larry Silverstein pay his way and trying to get the site finished as quickly as possible, the Port chose the more expensive option. (Whether it worked is debatable—3 World Trade Center is a stump, and 2 World Trade Center is nonexistent; both are awaiting tenants to restart construction, with delivery now slated for 2015 and 2016.) The feds were throwing even more money at the Port Authority—nearly $2.9 billion—and it was the path of least resistance.

http://observer.com/2013/05/pathfail/

It is mind boggling that a seat on a train to cross the hudson river costs as much as a ticket on the MTA. I don't have any inside information and I don't know who to blame for this (perhaps there is no point in blaming anyone other, everyone did what was in their personal best interest) but this does bring a point that we can't just throw money at infrastructure problems. We have to be judicious about it.

The twitter feed of @pathtrain https://twitter.com/pathtrain is littered with problems of signal failure on a bridge on the Newark World Trade Center line. I bet they could use some of that four billion dollars to fix that issue. But of course, the federal money is not for trivial things like that. They have a monument to build!

I guess this is something we need to think about in many government projects, not just at the federal level. We say that we spend more than $12k? per child in our school system and raise pitchforks and say the teachers aren't performing well enough for all the money we pour into the school system. Well, perhaps we are not pouring money at the right places. And no, I'm not advocating we get rid of public funding and make school administrators or teachers start a go fund me for their salaries or costs. That would not solve anything. These are difficult questions for me. I don't think our politicians and bureaucrats are making the right call here but I don't think it is right to leave these questions up to a ballot measure either.

A half century ago, the federal and state civil services weren't, I think, unionised, which means that politicians couldn't be bought by unions to give civil servants more benefits to increase union dues to buy more benefits to increase dues to buy more benefits.

The federal employee's union goes back to the thirties, and was officially recognized by the government in 1962. So, no.

Interestingly, Wikipedia says AFSCME was not really interested in collective bargaining until the late 1960s/1970s, when it had a period of rapid growth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Federation_of_State,_...

> it's where you guys spend it all.

http://www.businessinsider.com/gross-fixed-investment-2013-8 . Infrastructure-schmustructure, none of these guys can afford a program like F-35!

If only we had a transit-industrial complex instead

We do. Look at the cost of the WTC PATH Station.

We need to invent some defense-related shibboleth that would build us some infrastructure. It worked for the interstate highway system...

And not just stupid spending (ie not on r&d or infrastructure), but also loads of government friction, costing yet more.

Probably right, but we are talking about municipal taxes.

Sure, but isn't that part of the issue? Infrastructure is a national issue, not just a local one. It should draw from the tax pot as such.

It's more like how the money is being spent. The political landscape is totally binary so the only question allowed is whether something gets done or not. Once the decision has been made it gets done in the least efficient way and no further questions are asked. Or it gets stopped.

Just look at Obamacare: There is no public discussion about the details that could use improvement. Either it's all in or people want to totally cancel it. Nothing in between.

You've got to separate federal taxes from state taxes to understand how the US spends its money. In general the federal government is well funded and squanders its money on wasteful and unnecessary defence projects, such as having more aircraft carriers than conventional military wisdom says that they need. Such things don't enhance the US's defensive situation. The F-35 is another great example.

But states are generally underfunded, because lowering taxes is always popular and easy to do in state politics. State budgets are dominated by boring things such as education which an aging electorate often cares little about. And states are always in competition with their neighbours with regards to taxes, so raising sales tax might actually push more shopping across the state line to your neighbour. Couple that with the situation in California where any tax increase has to be voted on by the general public as a "proposition", and you get a scenario where adequate state funding becomes almost impossible.

We should put a proposition on the ballet to repeal that anti-tax-increase proposition, once and for all.

Don't equate spending with good governance.

New York figured out the tax collection thing, and our schools and other infrastructure cost more and work poorly.

Also, the Feds fund a wide variety of state operations, especially in social services and transport.

> Also, the Feds fund a wide variety of state operations, especially in social services and transport.

And education too. Money supposedly ear-marked for special education and free-and-reduced lunch floats many rural school districts; maybe there's a similar story for urban districts, but I wouldn't know about those.

80% of the federal budget is stuff other than military and VA benefits.

Specifically about 60% of the total budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA subsidies and safety net programs. Then we have your 20% (16% DoD and 4% VA), then 6% goes to interest on the debt, and the remaining 14% is everything else.

Though FWIW the percent of the budget spent on the military was (for somewhat obvious reasons) quite a lot higher during the Iraq war.

http://whatwepayfor.com/

Also, most if not all US states are required to run a balanced budget. This can result in cuts when forecasted revenues don't match actuals. The Federal government simply borrows more money and kicks the can down the road.

"Also, most if not all US states are required to run a balanced budget. This can result in cuts when forecasted revenues don't match actuals. The Federal government simply borrows more money and kicks the can down the road."

This is a misnomer that I see quite frequently: "states must run a balanced budget" and it leads to the exact terrible conclusion you came to: "only the federal government kicks the can down the road".

This is totally wrong. State governments can and do assume debt (generally issue municipal bonds) to cover short term deficits. They play funny money all over their budgets so they can mask what they're doing, but when states like Kansas cut hundreds of millions of highway funding to plug budget deficits, then repeal laws on debt caps and make the department of transportation issue record levels of debt to continue those projects, that's what they're doing. They're taking debt (issuing bonds) to plug deficit holes caused by lowering taxes.

That doesn't prevent them from becoming deeply in debt:

http://www.treasurer.ca.gov/graphs/go.asp

Actually, we spend quite a bit on education. From The National Center for Education Statistics:

> In 2011, the United States spent $11,841 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, an amount 35 percent higher than the OECD average of $8,789. At the postsecondary level, U.S. expenditures per FTE student were $26,021, almost twice as high as the OECD average of $13,619. (see [1])

[1] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

> Re: the conversation about walk-ability of cities. The key concept here is density.

It does require density, but not so much that you need buildings more than a few stories high. Much more important is zoning that allows shops and restaurants to be mixed in with housing, and not wasting those few square blocks within walking distance with parking lots and private yards.

1. The ability to take a taxi or uber home also prevents drunk driving. Responsible drinking or having a designated driver also prevents drunk driving.

Even if you were to insist the government subsidizes "get home late from a bar without driving", Empty night trains are probably one of the least cost effective ways of doing that.

Personally, I just walk home from a bar. That prevents drunk driving since I don't need cars, taxis or trains just to get a beer.

2. Density indeed helps increase walk-ability. But it's also about mixed used development. Jane Jacobs talks a lot about this in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". If zoning laws divide the city into a "business area", a "living area" and "an entertainment area", Density isn't going to save you from having to drive between those areas.

It's far more expensive to take a taxi/uber or to leave near bars than it is to take public transit home. Those are not realistic options for everyone.

That's because you're comparing only the cost paid directly by the passenger. Not the total cost of operating a train line that gets heavily subsidized by tax payers.

Mass transit makes a lot of sense. It can even be profitable when you have a lot of people going in the same direction at the same time. But whenever you're on a really empty bus or train - someone else is footing the bill for your very expensive ride home.

When properly supported mass transit is much cheaper than individual cars. BART is under $5/passenger trip. http://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/transit-system-efficiency

Mass transit can make sense, but it isn't profitable. Very few public transit systems in the world are profitable. Bus systems are more likely to be profitable. https://www.quora.com/Which-public-transportation-systems-ma...

Interestingly this is the exact same argument which was made when most of the San Francisco cable cars were ripped out. But it wasn't true.

Nor should they be profitable. Public goods are an expenditure, like clean air or public libraries. We want to spend money on them, that is the point.

Not profitable by fares charged, sure. Definitely profitable if they were credited with the gain in property taxes/values that their presence facilitates.

I think you're forgetting the cost of operating a road, and in particular, freeway network, which is entirely paid for by tax payers.

You need the road anyway. Keeping it open during the night doesn't add up to the costs. Having an empty train running during the night does.

You might not need the road anyways. If a major fraction of the population doesn't need to drive, you can make human-sized (instead of car-sized) roads and have higher density and lower upkeep.

And you can have trains that come much less often (like, say, once an hour) to collect the stragglers. Less wagons in the trains.

Hello, Tokyo has no trains from 1-5AM. So you can simply plan around it (either going home before 1 or knowing you'll be out til 5).

No, it's not going to go back to human-sized roads

There are deliveries to be made, buses to ride (even with a good train infrastructure), people who can't take public transport, etc

It's simply naive to think otherwise

Human sized roads can still have cars, just not as many as a 4-lane road Plus if you can shrink parking lots to 1/2 of what they are you'll reclaim so much space downtown

Electric trains are really efficient. I don't have the numbers in front of me but the per-passenger-mile cost is almost certainly lower than Uber.

The freeway network is mostly paid for by the folks who drive on it, through the gas tax and other user fees.

Actually (and surprisingly, at least for me), this is not the case... The Vice article mentions a US PRIG study that showed that "user revenue only covered 48 percent of the costs of roads". [1]

[1] http://www.uspirg.org/sites/pirg/files/reports/Who%20Pays%20...

Sorry I'm late coming back to this, but there's a reason I said "freeway network" and not "roads". For a variety of political and economic factors, local roads are maintained out of localities' general revenue. But they could easily be covered by an expanded gas tax, particularly if 1/6 of gas tax revenue wasn't redirected to transit.

> Not the total cost of operating a train line that gets heavily subsidized by tax payers.

A few extra late-night runs don't particularly move the budget. It's a bit like manufacturing - once you've designed your product and set up the production line, doing a run of 4000 items isn't much different to doing a run of 5000 items.

If you cannot afford whatever method is available to get home when hammered, the solution is not drunk driving, the solution is NOT DRINKING.

You guys are framing this debate as if going out and getting drunk in a bar is a necessity for life, it isn't.

Abstinence! Yeah that works really well.

Maybe we can compromise with drinking at home? I'd hate to suggest that anyone shouldn't be drinking...

Sin taxes make the world go round.

Hey if you want to explain that to the masses, go ahead. I don't think it will go over very well though.

Not everybody gets drunk within walking distance of their house and many (most?) cities have laws against public intoxication (eg walking drunk). Public transportation is one of those things that people shouldn't have to think about, it should just be available all the time (with varying service intervals).

Mixed-use amazing and the US is incredibly backwards in that sense. I think we have a stigma against mixed-use because apartments used to have shitty sound insulation. That's not really a problem anymore...

Is anyone cited for public intoxication merely drunk while in public, or are they instead drunk while causing a problem in public? I ask because in various cities I've had a fair amount of police contact while intoxicated, and never been cited. Typical exchange:

  "What are you doing?!"
  "Goin' 'ome, off'cer!"
  "You're too drunk to ride your bike. Get off and walk."
  "Ooookaaayyy..."

If being drunk makes one an asshole, then one is in fact an asshole, and one should drink at home.

Besides, train stations and bus stops are also public places. How is that supposed to work?

We often get instances of US police using the public intoxication laws as a cart blanche means to arrest people:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/stroke-victim-and-son-arr...

This also happens with drunk passengers in cars. Police will order drunk passengers to get out of a car, to then immediately charge them with public intoxication.

http://www.tahlequahdailypress.com/news/sheriff-s-beat-deput...

Nebulous laws like public intoxication statutes are rife for abuse by power hungry megalomaniac cops with no accountability or oversight.

> Police will order drunk passengers to get out of a car, to then immediately charge them with public intoxication.

In some states (e.g., Texas) a car counts as "public place" when it comes to intoxication. The passenger wasn't charged because he left the car, but he already violated the law by being intoxicated inside the car.

Which is a catch 22 on anyone drinking. You go to the bar, get drunk, and then cannot legally leave the bar to go home by any means, because where in every other state the correct action is to have a sober friend drive you home, in states like Texas you are still "public" despite being in someones private motor vehicle.

> Is anyone cited for public intoxication merely drunk while in public, or are they instead drunk while causing a problem in public?

Uh, YES. I am a quiet drunk, yet cops regularly hassle me to get in a cab just because I'm a little stumbly...

I remember Austin, Texas making headlines several years ago when cops started going into bars specifically to find drunk people to arrest, even if they were calm and were staying overnight in the same building.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find clear substantiation of specific cases other than this article, which only talked about the danger of how the law made it possible to do what you're describing:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/texas-racist-law...

>>Arrested for drinking in a bar? Sounds like the ultimate catch-22. Since 2006 ... cops ... have used a 1993 law as a pretext to enter any bar and arrest its patrons on the spot. The public intoxication standard, backed by the Texas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer's hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation...

Oy, I forgot about Texas. Things work differently there. It's clear, though, that my original statement was one of privilege: I'm not part of any of the more targeted communities. Still, can we expect intoxication to be more tolerated at the bus stop than it is anywhere else on the block? Perhaps the problem isn't so much giving LEOs discretion in writing citations, but rather it's having entirely too many LEOs in the first place. When they're busy with actual public safety work they won't have time for commemorative Stonewall Inn reenactments.

"Is anyone cited for public intoxication merely drunk while in public, or are they instead drunk while causing a problem in public? "

The legal term is usually drunk AND DISORDERLY.

Though for some cops, "I don;t want to have to scrape his sorry carcass off the next crosswalk with a spatula" is disorderly.

1. Yes, that was just an example of potential beneficial effects of public transit. My point was that some things in the "public good" just cost money, and should not be expected to monetize themselves.

2. True. Upvote for Jane Jacobs. Properly diverse density.

Around 20% of the motor fuels tax ends up in the general fund, and not the highway trust fund. Your legislators can increase highway/transit infrastructure spending by that amount, but won't pull funding from other programs that have grown dependent on it. You should talk to them about this.

The article briefly touched on it, but as car owners transition to non-petroleum powered vehicles, the motor fuels revenue has nowhere to go but down. So the current taxation basis of gallons consumed will become unworkable. Taxing based on miles traveled has privacy implications (they will need to monitor your driving to assess the tax). A monthly road-tax based on vehicle size/weight/capacity might be the only way to keep highways funded.

To keep transit systems like BART funded, they will have to support it by taxing the local population, whether they own a car or not (remove the dependence on the highway trust fund).

> The problems it highlights can be reduced to low tax revenues. Our infrastructure is crumbling because we do not collect enough taxes to subsidize it.

This is a double whammy, because so many urban areas basically came close to the brink of death during the mid 20th century and have only revitalized in the last 30-ish years or so. That means there's a massive infrastructure and services "debt" in most cities, so they have the burden of playing catch up as well.

> Things like roads and trains cannot (and should not) pay for themselves---they are a public good. The train might be empty at night, but the ability to take a train home prevents drunk driving, for example. One cannot put a monitory value on services like that, they speak to our collective quality of life. The SF transit situation is the direct consequence of a failing tax base. The wealth of the local tech industry is not "trickling down" to improve city infrastructure, in proportion to the industry's growth.

I strongly agree with this and wish it was more of a priority (sadly, our political system is so broken everyone is focused on other sideshows and wedge issues). Public transit is really a strong societal good, and an equalizer. Good public transit is a big factor in enabling the poorest and least advantaged to find jobs wherever they exist while keeping their housing costs low and also enabling things like continuing education and so on. It's a major component in that whole "lifting yourself up by your bootstraps" thing that people think is so important.

Whether or not something is a public good is a matter of technology. Trains are definitively a private good - they are rivalrous (you and I can't simultaneously occupy the same seat) and excludible (don't pay, they don't let you ride).

Roads are also rivalrous (you and I can't simultaneously occupy the same piece of pavement) and excludible (don't pay gas taxes, you get no gas, you can't ride).

If gas taxes were impractical, roads might be a public good.

We also collect plenty of taxes for transit. Our taxes just buy us 1/5-1/100 as much as every other country in the world, because our transit systems are incredibly inefficient.

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/comp...

https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...

Looking into the links you sent. Not sure if I am on board with "whether or not something is a public good is a matter of technology." I would say it is a matter of shared values and ideals. When you describe trains, you are talking about individual seats which are rivalrous, right? The train as a whole is a public good: it benefits everybody, has large positive externalities, and without subsidies it is not likely to be supported for profit. It is not rivalrous as a whole.

It's true that politicians talking about shared values and ideals can turn simple private goods into nightmarish public ones (e.g. US medicine). Have politicians created dumb laws like "the conductor may not kick someone off the train even if they don't pay" or "long trips must cost the same as short ones"?

The train is merely an intermediate capital good used to provide train seats. It's private at the level of capital goods which is also the level at which it's paid for - only one railway can use a piece of rolling stock (rivalrous) and that railway can prevent other railways from using it (excludible). You might as well say that a house or a car is a public good, since they are merely capital goods that provide a stream of an underlying consumer good (space to live, road trips).

What are the positive externalities of a train? If anything, it's externalities seem to be negative - it creates pollution and noise. (It might be less negative than driving but that's a different claim.)

A train seat is not the thing I am paying for. A transit company is typically chartered around provision of service regions and schedules, and it has the power to divert passengers to alternatives like buses if problems arise preventing use of some existing infrastructure. The customer is not there to "ride the train" but to reach a destination - the transit is judged upon how well this demand is satisfied.

Private property law allows owners to enforce their own rules(to a point). This both explains the private control over the train and tracks and lends weight to the possibility of being kicked off the train, as it is justified in terms of disruption to service and resulting monetary losses. To wit, a positive externality of transit service is economic gain from the population having improved market access(more goods, services, workplaces within reach). The transit company does not realize these gains, the public does. The company's enforcement of rules is guided by the premise that some amount of security and order is necessary to achieve its service goals.

Reaching your destination via whatever mechanism is still a private good.

To wit, a positive externality of transit service is economic gain from the population having improved market access(more goods, services, workplaces within reach).

This is a positive externality of any transit method, including privately owned cars.

Ultimately what you've stumbled across is the fact that nearly any good or service will create gains from trade that are not captured by the producer. E.g., video games, cakes and pies, pornographic videos, and kindles all make people happier and nicer to those around them. This is why encouraging economic activity is generally considered beneficial.

Does this make cakes, pies, video games, pornos and kindles public goods?

What is a public good by this standard? You and I can't breathe the same air at the same time. We can't drink the same water at the same time.

Physical reality is rivalrous--in general, matter excludes other matter. Seems like the concept of a "public good" needs to be more refined than whether the thing permits simultaneity.

Not being invaded by communists is neither rivalrous nor excludible. Similarly for not being killed by ebola, eaten by cannibals, or inhaling toxic nuclear waste.

Roads would be a public good in an era or country where gas taxes/odometer taxes/similar mechanisms were not feasible.

Lots of things are public goods.

So basically the absence of things, and things which have no user fee? If a subway system was 100% tax-funded with no user fee, would it become a public good in your eyes?

No, it would be a private good that was subsidized.

Something is a public good if it's not possible (or extremely difficult) to exclude non-payers from receiving it (as well as being rivalrous). The subway just doesn't qualify - turnstiles exist.

Public goods aren't just the absence of things. Basic research, public art, and similar things would be public goods. Or going back to my previous example, roads in a country where gas/odometer taxes are impossible to collect would be a public good.

Why do people have such a strong desire to attach the word "public good" to things which are rivalrous and excludible?

So if we take the turnstiles off the subway (which was implied in my comment above about no user fee), does it become a public good?

> Public goods aren't just the absence of things. Basic research, public art, and similar things would be public goods.

Oh ok, so everyone can benefit equally from basic research? There are no user fees for, say, cancer therapies based on government-funded research?

Everyone can view public art? There's no limit on how many people can be in a park or museum at once?

The reason I'm belaboring this point is that there is no difference in how we finance, build, maintain, or use mass transit and roads. Heck quite a lot of mass transit is based on roads, like city buses.

Basically I suspect you just prefer driving, and are trying to create a tortured definition of "public good" to give your preference a veneer of objective rationality.

No, just as sandwiches don't become a public good if I leave my kitchen door unlocked. Please just read the standard economic definitions of the terms.

Basically I suspect you just prefer driving, and are trying to create a tortured definition of "public good"

You sure got that one wrong. I haven't owned a car since 2000 and I hated it for all 6 months. The fact that I prefer mass transit and walkable cities doesn't mean that this preference deserves subsidies. (I'd be happy with eliminating the laws that make such things illegal and insanely expensive when legal.)

I understand the standard definition fine--what I'm pointing out is your inconsistency in applying that definition, like listing as examples research, public art, and free roads despite the fact that none of them satisfy the characteristics of non-excludable and non-rivalrous.

Even the wikipedia page is hilariously mixed up, listing a public lighthouse as a public good, even though a person needs to own a ship to benefit from the lighthouse (excluding most people), only so many ships can pass through a section of the sea at one time (making it rivalrous), and of course the government can just turn off the light whenever it wants (excluding everyone).

Edit to add: if a road or a park or a lighthouse can be a public good, then so can a subway. If a subway can't be a public good, then neither can a road, a park, or a lighthouse, since they all violate the definition in similar ways.

The government can't exclude people who don't pay for the lighthouse from using it. It's all or nothing - hence not excludible.

A subway can exclude anyone who doesn't pay while including anyone who does. To take the example of several subways I've been on recently (NYC, Delhi, Amsterdam, Boston), if you don't pay the turnstile won't let you through.

If you scroll up, you'll find me explicitly agreeing that roads are a private good which should be paid for via user fees (either gas or odometer taxes), and those who refuse to pay should be excluded.

Okay, I'll think about this. Thanks for the discussion. Have a good weekend.

You are using public good a bit unusually; a public good is a positive externality (and the term is sometimes extended to things that produce positive externalities), it's the opposite of a public (or social) cost, a negative externality.

Roads aren't a source of public good because odometer taxes are impossible, they are sources of public good because and to the extent that creating them provides benefits beyond those who make the choice to use them, whether or not those making the choice to use them pay directly for that use in accordance with their dirct, private benefit from the transaction.

I'm using the terms as defined in standard economics. Public = non rivalrous, non-excludible, private = rivalrous and excludible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_good

Suppose we attach the label "public good" to roads or trains. What implications - if any - do you believe follow from this?

Certainly the implication that the government should subsidize it does NOT follow. A good which is rivalrous and excludible is one that the market can provide adequate quantities of, in contrast to goods which are non-rivalrous and non-excludible which will be underprovided by the market.

Living in the suburbs is also highly subsidized since the suburbs have enormous infrastructure costs that are hidden. See http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/charles_marohn.html

The glorious state of California has the highest taxes in the nation and is the home of the tech industry. If wealth isn't trickling down, it's because it is being wasted.

Twelfth-highest, as it happens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_tax_levels_in_the_United...

Actually California has the 4th highest taxes in the nation behind New York, New Jersey, and Conneticut. It has the highest income tax, but that's because its other taxes are relatively low, in particular property taxes which were evicerated by Prop 13. California's current tax system is actually regressive, with the poorer section of society shouldering more of the tax burden than the richer segment.

https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Taxes-101/Sta...

Also the tech industry holds an awful lot of wealth outside the US, in tax havens such as Ireland. And while taxes in California are high by US standards, many European countries (with excellent public transport systems) tax at higher rate still, for example sales tax in the UK is 20%.

The state of California is chronically underfunded because it does a poor job of taxing the people who actually have money. Not because the money isn't well spent (some 40% of it goes on education alone).

>The state of California is chronically underfunded because it does a poor job of taxing the people who actually have money.

So does everyone else. The reason it's so hard to tax the wealth of the rich is not because they're masters of political manipulation but because they're -- as you note -- much better at (legally) restructuring their activities so that the wealth does not pass through a nexus that a given jurisdiction controls.

To be fair, Ireland is just used as a stop on the wayto the Bahamas/Caymans, for most tech company money. It does pump up our GDP though, which makes people think we are doing well, so at least we get that.

Source: Irish person who works in tech.

10) And THAT is because of the systemic starving of government by the ultra-rich.

20) That would probably require a sprawl tax. The wannabe rich in suburbs ... well goto 10

> We need to value density as it allows for more compact living.

rack em and stack em, eh?

recent research finds that people living in low-density suburbs are happier than people living in cities. People living in rural areas are happiest of all.

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=11673

We can promote more "compact living" but the data shows it degrades human happiness.

Serious question, why do rural areas have higher suicide rates per capita?

Arguments presented without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. The guy you're responding to cited his, please cite yours.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/04/rural-suicide.aspx

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/the-growin...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/rural-youth-suicide...

http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=21950...

That wasn't an argument. It was an uncontroversial factual statement. Citing things is nice, but you can also just google 'suicide rural'.

Just saw this comment, and it looks like other people chimed in, it isn't really controversial, the CDC has good number on it. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6414a9.htm

I'm going to speculate wildly, and I have no basis for these assertions. If any of this is objectively wrong, please correct me.

1. Easier access to firearms, and other suicide methods. Gun ownership in rural areas is higher than in cities, and I'd wager that gun suicides by gun are a lot more likely to succeed than other methods (e.g., jumping off a building.)

2. People in rural areas may socialize less, and may have less of a support network. I live in New York, and if I want to see my friends after work, it's an extra 5 minutes on the train for us, and an easy way to get home after having a few rounds at the bar. If I were back in Dallas, it might be 45 minutes out of my way in traffic, and it would be much more difficult to get home and then back to work again if I couldn't drive my car home. In a more isolated area, your friends might live two hours from you, or two states over.

3. Some suicide attempts are actually cries for help, and in a dense city, more people may notice that cry.

What pavel_lishin said, but also:

1) further distance from hospitals mean more people die.

2) great access to means and methods - guns, vet meds, etc.

3) more high risk jobs (farmers, vets, and rural workers are high risk jobs (because means and methods, and also because economic uncertainty)

4) more stigma around suicide and mental health.

The data show no such thing. Correlation != causation.

People self-select where they live. It could easily be that happy people choose to live in the country instead of the city, or people in cities have more stressful jobs, etc

Exactly. I live in a big city. It's already dense enough that transit congestion is a major problem. One coworker bought a house a couple of years ago, and in the last year told me that his commute essentially doubled.

Further increasing the density of my city (especially if we do it before putting adequate transit in place to prevent congestion from becoming worse) is not something that I want to happen. Why would I vote for it? I'm happy for density to stay at the same level it's at now, or only gradually increase. I haven't heard a convincing argument for why I should be in favor of increasing density at more than a relatively slow rate.

Cities should look after their current residents. If the residents don't want density to increase, then who is to say that's the wrong policy?

It's a factor of poor public transit. Imagine walking out of your house, walking 3 minutes to the nearest bus stop, waiting at most 5 minutes for the next bus, and then not worrying about any congestion until you're at work.

If you miss the bus, the next one will be there in 10 minutes. If you don't want to wait for 10 minutes, another bus that will take a slightly different route and cause you to walk an extra 7 minutes from bus stop to your destination, will be there in 3 minutes.

Unfortunately most Americans have never experienced anything close to that level of public transit, and cannot imagine cities functioning like that.

Toronto has a transit system that works like you describe (~10 minute waits), however, most still find it easily worth $600 a month to drive a car so you don't have to spend 20 minutes every day outside in -30 weather walking and waiting for transit.

Furthermore, even if you wanted to take transit occasionally, it's not worth it because the fare ($3 one-way) is almost always more than the marginal cost of driving (gas).

Then you have the signaling aspect (there's a perception that only poor people take the bus).

I don't think anything will change unless car ownership triples or more in cost.

Yeah, Toronto is much better than most North American cities, but it's not perfect by any means, at least if one is to believe r/toronto. :)

Regarding car ownership, yes, you can always tax car registrations and gasoline way higher and spend the extra money to add more frequent service, retrofit car lanes into bus-only lanes/streets, add bike lanes, and lower fares.

This what it's like if you live and work near BART in San Francisco. You don't plan your commute. You just show up and wait on average five minutes.

Weekend service is much less frequent, though.

> walking 3 minutes to the nearest bus stop, waiting at most 5 minutes for the next bus,

Yup, welcome to Japan. How a good mass transit system changes how you live your life is hard to explain until you experience it.

The data shows correlation not causation. Maybe people in urban centers on a whole would be more happy if there was better public transit, and thus, less traffic congestion. Or maybe people in urban areas would be happier if there was a better balance between real estate supply and demand such that price curve wasn't so steep as one gets closer in? Or maybe it's that concentrated poverty in big cities drags the happiness index down? Who knows, it's probably some combination of all of those things.

I know that when I hear people complain about living in the DC Metro area, the two complaints are traffic and real estate prices. We have the metro but it is literally teetering on crisis as they had to shut the whole system down for a day recently. Improving the operation of metro should be a very high priority for the DC, MD, and VA governments, and the feds for that matter.

> recent research finds that people living in low-density suburbs are happier than people living in cities. People living in rural areas are happiest of all.

Anecdata, but that one year I lived in suburbia was terrible from just about every perspective I care about. Couldn't even walk to the corner store to grab milk because there was no such thing as a corner store. Wanna go party in the evening? City is an hour train ride away. Terrible. Wanna grab drinks somewhere close? Choice of 3 bars. Ugh. Wanna party past 10pm? Can't. Everything closed. (this was in the US)

As for rural ... I have a lot of family who comes from rural lands. They all fled into the cities as soon as they were old enough to do so. The infrastructure to support modern life just isn't there in ruralandia. Even my grandparents moved from super rural to slightly less rural with the wave of post-ww2 modernization in the 50's. (this was in Europe)

I'm probably the odd one out here, though. I will never understand the American fetishization of suburbia. Even now I keep arguing with my girlfriend (grew up in US) cause she wants to move from SoMa to the more outskirt parts of SF like Portrero.

Never is a strong word. Maybe if I ever have kids the same sort of salmon-like instinct that Americans have will kick in and I too will want to move back to my spawning grounds.

edit: Actually, this might be cultural. As a European, I think that the closer you live to downtown, the higher your social status. This is a bias that is hard for me to escape even though in the US the social signal is inverted.

> Wanna grab drinks somewhere close? Choice of 3 bars.

And then you either leave your car there, and pay more to take a cab home, and then back again in the morning to pick the car up - or risk driving drunk.

The study you cite didn't bother surveying or measuring anything non-American. Americans show the correlation you've described because Americans are indoctrinated to dislike cities and in fact to restructure cities into low-quality-of-life settings, even while everyone else on the planet understands just fine how to live happily in cities.

Are people who live in low-density suburbs generally well off financially? Aren't people who are well off financially happier?

That might be true. However, suburban living comes at a cost that is highly subsidized. The cost of infrastructure per person in the suburbs is much higher than in a dense city. There is just so much more roads and pipes and cables per person. However, the cost gets carried by everyone evenly. If that cost had to be paid by the people in the suburbs (like me) than living there would all the sudden be quite a bit less attractive. This was covered in a great episode of Econtalk: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/charles_marohn.html

That's interesting, how do you explain Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan? Lower taxes but better public transport?

Also, public transit is by no means terrible.

The premise is just fatally flawed.

> One cannot put a monitory value on services like that

You sure as shit can. Budgets are fixed. Budget consumption is zero sum. Maybe in fantasy land we could spend unlimited resources on trains and unicorns, but in the real world we have to measure the cost-benefit of all expenditures.

I just mean that some things do not need to turn a profit. Of course you are right about budgets being fixed and priorities weighed with specific numbers attached.

There is no reason that roads cannot pay for themselves. Gas tax revenue comes close to paying for roads when it is spent on roads.

Define "comes close". In California the fuel tax covers less than half the maintenance cost and none of the capital costs of the roads.

You aren't including federal gas taxes.

"Things like roads and trains ... are a public good."

No, they're not.

From Wikipedia (which matches what I learnt in economics class):

"... a public good is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others."

Trains are definitely excludable (can't get on without a ticket) and rivalrous (the train can get full, meaning no space for additional passengers).

Roads are obviously rivalrous (gridlock!) but you could argue the extent to which they are excludable. Sure, there are toll roads, but it would be hard for you to exclude me from using the road in front of my house. With technology, though, you could make me pay for usage according to some arbitrarily-designed tariff, though, which would force me to self-exclude if I weren't willing to pay the price.

Those a mucky definitions. Roads are excludable in just the same way as trains... you don't have a car, you can't get on roads. That's economic exclusion, and a bigger excluder than transit fares in most urban settings (not to mention requiring a license, no DUIs, etc).

A good transit system has very low fares, as they try to include everyone even the poorest people. A good transit system also has very rarely full trains, and more coming along in 5min if that one's full.

If you're arguing that roads are a public good, then you absolutely must accept that transit is one... and any rational person would agree that they are a far greater good than roads and highways (at least, within the urban centers).

"Those a mucky definitions."

There was exactly one definition in my comment: that of a public good. The remainder was my reasoning for why roads and trains do not fit that definition of a public good. With which part(s) do you disagree?

"If you're arguing that roads are a public good..."

I'm not arguing that. That's why I started my comment with "No, they're not".

I'm not sure how to respond to the rest of your comment, as your main point (that public transit is good) is orthogonal to mine.

Mucky definitions: excludable and rivalrous.

> Roads are obviously rivalrous (gridlock!) but you could argue the extent to which they are excludable

That sounds like you're arguing that roads are in some way a public good, or more of a public good than trains, to me...

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