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Comment by OliverJones | Hacker News Reader

This is all part of the long-standing "taxation is theft" meme that infected the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There are many reasons we can't have nice things. One such reason is our collective unwillingness to pay for them.

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Would you please not take HN threads on generic political tangents? Discussion quality goes down as genericity goes up.

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"This is all part of the long-standing "taxation is theft" meme that infected the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s"

No, it's not. This is all part of the scam politicians have been running on the public for decades. Namely taking taxpayer money earmarked for specific purposes (i.e. maintenance) and then not using it for those things. Then they turn around and say "we don't have enough money, we need to raise taxes to pay for these unforeseen costs", even though the costs were completely and entirely foreseeable. Also, let's not forget the egregious waste on construction that is rampant in publicly funded projects, with NYC being the worst offender of them all. Case in point - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

I agree with you, however, how would you propose that we ensure compliance in respect to money being used for intended purposes?

Kinda hate to say it because of the current level of hype making it always sound buzzwordy, but a blockchain or something similar could be legitimately useful here. The issue is getting government entities to agree to strict accountability.

Privatization.

Didn't we give telcos a ton of money in the 90s to ensure fiber to the premises everywhere? How did that work out? Privatization still requires oversight.

We did it with phones in general and the cost of service plummeted as the quality rose.

That's just the telco taking credit for what microchip manufacturers have achieved.

First, we didn't do that.[1] Second, the telecoms were already privatized, so what the 90s were about was deregulation, which is different. Third, while it's true that privatization (as well as deregulation) requires oversight, it's been quite successful in other countries in the transit sector. Japan's transit sector is highly privatized, for example, and mostly unsubsidized. The EU has called for deregulation of rail service by 2020: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-strike/rail-strike....

[1] I don't want to derail the thread, but you can search on HN for the past discussion. Also, whatever we did worked fine. Out of the G7 countries, we're #2 in fiber penetration, behind Japan.

They can legally bind the revenue to expenditure purposes when they pass the spending bills. I have actually seen this in a few states and municipalities. I believe NJ passed something within the last year or two legally binding revenue from a specific tax to be spent by a certain legislative authority. If I recall, it was related to the gas tax - they increased it and they said everything must be spent by whatever government entity is responsible for highway maintenance (DOT I think?). That way there is no legal way (without another bill being passed) for politicians to use the money for some other purpose. It's still possible that the DOT squanders the money through mismanagement, but at least it would still be spent on roads and infrastructure, as intended.

Same way that private corporations ensure money is spent where it is intended to be spent.

Fire (read: impeach/do not re-elect) those that do not their job by spending money not for its intended purpose. Discover this by regular, full, public audits.

Prosecute those who commit embezzlement and larceny and send the to prison if convicted. Make them serve long prison stints with no hope of parole for having violated their position of public trust and bar them from holding public office or lobbying positions on penalty of more punitive prison time.

Laws with criminal penalties.

Excuse me, but USA pays a lot. But apparently due to some cost disease, we need to pay a lot more than other countries to achieve the same goal. There was a fascinating NYT article [1] about spiraling costs of NYC subway, but you can observe the same phenomenon in other places (defense spending, healthcare spending, California high speed rail etc).

So yeah, as a taxpayer, I will be super weary of approving any bond measure for infrastructure projects unless there is an ironclad proposal to control the costs.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

Yeah, paying for BART in the bay area is like: property taxes go to BART. BART uses it to pay gate agents $150k+ and do no infrastructure improvements. Another measure goes on the ballot because BART desperately needs money to fix infra. Bond is approved. BART employees strike for more money, get it. Infra improvements never happen.

I guess we gotta pay those gate agents the big bucks to stand there and watch people walk through the emergency exit gates instead of paying the fare. Seems like a six figure job to me!

Or, the 50%+ of the eligible people who don't vote, can vote, and do something about it. At current voting rates, every race is competitive.

> BART uses it to pay gate agents $150k+

citation needed

Here's the data - the claim is not supported http://blog.vctr.me/bart/ The raw, underlying data: https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-a... Throwing this into Excel I see only around 15 employees who are in lower level positions that are anywhere near this compensation level. That being said, they do exist, and it's usually due to significant OT. Also, infuriating things like this exist but they are the exception, not the rule: https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/11/01/bart-janitor-grossed-...

I only see one "station agent" with compensation anywhere near that level and it is Antonette Bryant. The rest are in the 60k area.

I included total monetary compensation (base+OT=other) and looked at more positions. Station agent is directly in line with what OP said, but I was looking for others that were in lower positions yet making 6 figures. Either way, we agree that the claim is not supported in the general sense. Only a few outliers exist.

It's not. Compare the budgets and ridership of MTA versus Transit for London. Similar cities, similar riderships, and MTA has a substantially bigger budget.

We're underfunded in the sense that "it costs us 5x as much to do the same thing, and we're only allocating 1.5x as much money to it as European countries." Kinda true but not really the root cause.

New Yorkers are pretty highly taxed, actually.

Well, they used not to notice it as they were writing off the local taxes against fed taxes. I cannot wait until 2018 tax bills hit home. They should be eye opening to Manhattan/Williamsburg/Park Slope set

> Well, they used not to notice it as they were writing off the local taxes against fed taxes.

Deducting state taxes make state taxes look exactly like loss of income. If you would notice an equally heavy loss of income, you'll notice state taxes even with full deductibility.

Now, if it was a federal tax credit at full value of state taxes paid, sure, you wouldn't notice the state taxes. But that was never the situation.

Much the Schadenfreude as I will have when a well-off population that generally promotes higher tax rates gets what it asked for, I don't think they "don't notice it" when they sign off on their annual filings and see their refund check. After all, they're only getting back their marginal federal rate, not the entire amount. It's how little they get for their money compared to other countries after what they (net) pay, or how little people pay elsewhere in the country for not much comparably less, that I would hope sparks a productive response toward city, town, and state agencies.

New York City residents pay some of the highest taxes in the country.

We pay more into the state then we get back. And upstate/albany often times sabotages us (like the MTA subsidizing some politically ski slopes).

Same at the federal level. That's more complex since the region gets bunch of money back due to "security".

Regulatory capture is bad, and happens both ways. Rs get support from groups that don't want taxes. Ds get support from groups that want taxes to be spent on them. Turns the budget into a negative sum game. The future loses.

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