Hacker News Reader

Comment by lumost | Hacker News Reader

Through my lifetime I've only heard about tax cuts, I find this mysterious as presumably the taxes must have once risen to now be cut. Why have we seemingly lost the ability to say that we need new taxes?

In Boston we constantly complain about the state of our public transit system which has been in debt for decades. Being proximate to a train station has a 20-50% positive benefit to home prices. The transit system can't raise fairs as those punish lower income workers who most need it, and they are even prohibited from raising fairs at more than 2%/yr by state law. Why can't we tax the property owners (I am one) benefiting from proximity to the train stations? Why are we building stations with 100 year growth horizons if it means we only build 1 new station?

View on HN

>In Boston we constantly complain about the state of our public transit system

Have you seen the Big Dig? Look at the size of the check we wrote for that one. Now look at the kind of houses all the people who got to work on that project (whether in the office or in the field) in their mid and late careers (when you can make real money rather than be schlepping supplies around a job site for a "you haven't put in your time yet" size check) are living in.

Waste like that is why nobody wants to increase taxes. Pretty much anything more than the bare minimum seems to just slowly evaporate. The money goes poof before it trickles down into programs, infrastructure and services that actually provide benefit to the taxpayer. People would rather ride on a crappy T and pay marginally less tax than pay more tax to ride on a crappy T that has a handful more spots in the org chart for politicians to fill with people who won't show up.

Look at the semi-annual (well, let's be fair and give them credit, it's more like 3yr) state police "fraudulent overtime" scandal. It goes way, way back. Remember when the Probation Department got caught paying salaries to political appointees who didn't show up and didn't have any job duties? Remember when there was that enforcement/compliance arm of the Dept. of Elder Affairs that didn't actually exist like it was supposed to because the money was redirected to pay for more (politically appointed) middle managers who just forwarded emails all day? This is what "raising taxes" looks like in Massachusetts. For every $10 spent you'll be lucky to have a buck actually be used to run a bus, patch a pothole pay for healthcare, etc. etc. It's no surprise that people don't wanna pay for that.

People will pay for public services. Nobody really cares whether the garbage truck driver gets his pay stub on private letterhead or government letterhead. Nobody really cares whether they have public or private EMT services so long as they show up with equal promptness. What people won't pay for is public leeches and Massachusetts has done a very good job cultivating the perception that you can't buy one of the former without getting ten of the latter in the deal. No surprise that people don't wanna take that deal.

The big dig is likely to be around for 200+ years. It’s exactly the kind of useful government spending everyone wants and nobody wants to pay for.

Could efficiency improve? Yes! But note that waste was private companies padding out the contract not government employees. People want to outsource government functions, blame government when that fails, and use it to justify increased outsourcing. Clearly there is a failure in that logical reasoning.

> private companies padding out the contract not government employees

I have no references to back this theory up, but I feel like this is where most of the waste happens.

[Gov spend public money] -> [pay private company]

The government isn't incentivized to get the best deal for our money which results in overpaying or just flat out corruption. eg. I'll overpay my friend's company and they will kick me back some money for choosing their contract.

Actually, urban freeways around the world are getting ripped out. They are even looking at doing it to one in Detroit. I would be surprised if the freeways for the big dig are still around in 50 years let alone 200.

The big dig was one such "rip out" project. An above ground , elevated, urban free way was buried beneath the city.

It still goes through the city center with a lot above ground. Definitely better than before though

I sometimes wonder if the apparent endemic corruption of government in the US is due in part to a miss-perception of how much government employees should be paid. In Singapore and Japan government jobs were often viewed as jobs for the elite. In Massachusetts we pay many government employees less than they'd make doing literally anything else. A biology teacher's pay starts at ~600/week.

Is it that wrong that the people who ran one of the largest infrastructure programs in the US live in nice homes? The project was horrendously over budget and late, but it did do what proponents wanted it to do. Private firms taking over the commuter rail like Keolis don't seem to be achieving any quality or cost benefits.

We may be in a strange situation where fundamentally underpaid workers find ways to game the system to make about what they could in the private sector, would higher wages help eliminate the "wasteful" practices?

This is a fact many take for granted: the association between government jobs and inefficiency is not an inherent part of government as much as a reflection of the fact that nobody with options is going to choose a job which pays far less.

> Being proximate to a train station has a 20-50% positive benefit to home prices.

> Why can't we tax the property owners (I am one) benefiting from proximity to the train stations?

don't you pay property tax based on the value of your home? if so, this is already happening.

It's true that property taxes are based on the assessment of a home, but it's also not necessarily true that the assessment does a good enough approximation to consider that any house within 1mi of the train is worth 20% more than one 1.5mi away. From my hobby of looking at home appraisals in Boston towns it seems the biggest factor in most towns is square footage.

Another point to consider is that most towns in Massachusetts seem to use replacement cost as the main method of appraisal versus potential income/value. Meaning, 2 families appraise for nearly the same as a single family when they are in reality worth 1.5-2x more in potential income via rent or selling.

Either it adds value or it doesn't, if square footage is the main thing then it doesn't add as much value you as think.

This is the beautiful thing about prices - we let individuals decide what something is worth. Perhaps we don't need new taxes but just better assessors and planning.

It does add value in the real market. It doesn't add value according to the town property assessor. There's a disconnect between reality and property taxes.

So the argument against dedicated infrastructure taxes like this, is that it takes tax money away from other things that also need it.

Generally speaking, increased development will also require not just roads and transit, but investments in water, electric, sewer, schools, police, fire, etc. If you dedicate funding for one thing it takes away from something else, and you really don’t want to turn a general funds tax bill into dozens of line-items that get nitpicked and fought over constantly.

Boston property taxes are low at a ~1% rate, and as others have noted the assessed price is not the price I would sell the home for. In Massachusetts you also get a ~1500 dollar tax credit for your primary residence.

In California property taxes are 1.x rate, and the assessed price is based essentially on when your ancestors bought it, with a 2% increase.

Which leads to comedy like this: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1265719788875272192

In Maryland property tax rates can increase without a vote as long as the county deems it necessary. Usually the county doesn't need to deem it necessary because property value increases (which has the effect of increasing tax revenue)

So basically what I'm saying is... the POTUS doesn't need to do song and a dance in order for taxes to increase for people. For a lot of states, as long as the value of the property keeps increasing, the residents are paying more and more taxes every year. And if the income from your job doesn't increase at the same rate as your property taxes... it can put a lot of financial strain on you (my relatives in NY moved to a different state because the property taxes in Albany were eating them alive)

Example:

https://www.baltimoresun.com/business/real-estate/bs-bz-tax-...

My FIL moved to FL from MD because of taxes. He is well-to-do due to high responsibility positions and shrewd investments. He used to donate to local environment orgs, the arts, scholarship funds, etc. He told MD to find someone else as they bled him for the last time.

Where I live (one of the most liberal cities in the US), it seems that most taxes get passed - even the poorly structured or regressive ones. It's frankly frustrating to see our profoundly mismanaged school district get yet another 10 million dollar bond (generated from property tax) passed every 4 years.

School districts spend an insane amount of money. The budget of our local school district is 10x that of the city and they mismanage the hell out of it. They just spent 100M building a new middle school when the old one was only ~40 years old, solid brick, and just needed roof repairs.

the school district in my parents town is one of the smallest in the area and they built one of the largest football stadiums in the area they passed a levey to pay for it, but while this was going on they had a roof that needed replaced on the highschool, they knew this it was leaking already but they figured they wouldn't get the stadium built if they had to do it second, they waited until the next year to demand money to fix the roof.

Because then you would get NIMBYism against train stations. While the asset value might go up, that could hurt cashflow for a lot of people. Anyone who wants to live there for a long time should oppose the higher tax or the train station as they don't benefit from the asset appreciation.

The majority of new stations get built in purpose designed "transit oriented development" e.g. where housing and amenities for 10k+ residents are built at one point in time.

Major Boston examples include the Seaport District and Assembly Square.

Seaport: http://www.bostonplans.org/projects/development-projects/sea...

Assembly Square: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_Square#Marketplace_hi...

"Through my lifetime I've only heard about tax cuts, I find this mysterious as presumably the taxes must have once risen to now be cut. Why have we seemingly lost the ability to say that we need new taxes?"

At the local level, we see pretty regular tax increases here in the midwest. There's a lot of resistance to increases in federal and state-wide taxes largely because federal and state spending is really hard to directly connect to a benefit to the payer (i.e. home value increases, better commutes, a fun local park). On the other hand, a ballot initiative to fund an improvement in roads or sewers is pretty easy to get through.

Same where I live in the midwest, it's better than even money that a tax or bond for schools or infrastructure will be approved.

The MBTA needs local permission to build stations, even on existing rights of way.

The Red Line was going to extend out to Arlington and then 128... but Arlington blocked it. You'll see several rationales listed, but the big one was racism: Arlington (now a liberal bastion like Cambridge) was afraid that "those people" would come to their town.

What Massachusetts needs is a coherent state-wide plan that handles transit on a public-first rather than car-first strategy. What we've got is a set of non-cooperating agencies all trying to deal with local problems.

In New Jersey there is an abandoned commuter line that already has stations and the tracks are still in place. The residents shutdown efforts to revitalize it because it would raise property taxes.

The great depression was really the trigger for massive tax increases. We've generally been cutting them since.

Personally, I think tax increases would be much more popular if the government showed the money would be spent efficiently. Cost+ contracting and endless cost overruns have eroded public support for government projects.

You must be very young to not have seen tax increases. Being near the train station only has benefit to those that use the train.

If you drive and don't take the train you directly benefit from less car traffic.

I wish I was that young ;)

There is nothing that stops the government from increasing property tax surrounding train stations.

> You must be very young to not have seen tax increases. Being near the train station only has benefit to those that use the train.

Reduced congestion on the road benefits everyone.

As does the reduction in air pollution, and pm2.5 from break and tire dust.

If proper rezoning takes place around train stations, then everyone benefits from denser housing available for those who desire it, reducing upwards pressure on housing elsewhere in the city.

Businesses all along the entire train line benefit from an increase in customer volume that doesn't require a corresponding increase in parking requirements.

The decrease in parking means land is more efficiently used, actual buildings can be constructed which increase tax revenue for the city, and provide more jobs.

Mass transit is awesome.

> Why have we seemingly lost the ability to say that we need new taxes?

Decades of Republican propaganda have led the average right-of-center voter to believe that higher taxes, for any reason, are a) stealing their hard-earned money, and/or b) a socialist plot to turn America into either the USSR or Venezuela.

I believe that is definitely part of it, but it's also a lifetime of hearing about government waste, bills passed with tons of "pork" spending, witnessing government mismanagement of resources, and concern that the government is not necessarily the best way to solve every problem. And then once you decide that a particular issue is best addressed by the government, there's a valid debate over which level of government (e.g. in the U.S. stuff done at the federal level often has a reputation for being bloated, slow-moving, and less effective than it could be).

Decades of Democratic propaganda have led the average left-of-center voter to believe higher taxes, for any reason are a) taking money from greedy Republicans to redistribute wealth, and/or b) going to turn America into a socialist state. See how that works.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com