Comment by babesh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by babesh | Hacker News Reader

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There are a lot of laws and taxes designed to promote progressive behaviors already. They aren’t meant to raise money or because of scarcity. They are designed to coerce behavior. The assumption is that you are stupid and need to be coerced. But first comes the narrative fed through the media.

Examples: soda tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, gasoline tax, candy tax, decreased state funding for school districts in higher income areas, state requirements for higher density housing lest the city lose state funding, ban on gas cars, ban on gas stoves, tiered electricity and water costs, elimination of magnet schools.

I would expect far more social manipulation through laws in the next few years.

Here are a few that I can dream up:

- decreased state funding for schools if your housing is below a certain density, or below a job/housing ratio

- make water and electricity far more progressively expensive

- additional property tax based on land area

- additional road tax based on number of miles in an area

- higher sales tax on cars

Some of the examples you gave are simply capturing negative externalities (e.g. carbon emissions). Often a precise externality tax is too difficult for a government to implement so a ban is done instead. The UK banned free plastic bags at large supermarkets and it was incredibly effective.

It makes sense for rural and suburban services to cost more in taxes because they cost more for the government to deliver (simple example being a more extensive road network). The status quo is actually that rural and suburban living is being subsidised by government.

I agree with you about the soda tax though!

Edit: I see you updated your comment but I will leave mine as is.

Government gets its money comes from taxes. What percentage comes from suburban versus urban areas?

What is that money actually going to? In California, over half goes to school funding and suburban schools get less since the state gives more to poorer (mostly urban) school districts.

The typical complaint is that suburban areas use more water, energy, and their roads cost more. However, they often have to pay for all that. Local roads are paid by local government (read the suburbs). Water districts are often also local.

The only areas where suburbs may use more (but not pay more) is in building and maintaining infrastructure: highways, electrical, gas. The power infrastructure is long paid for and is actually a regulated utility so you are limited to highways. I wonder what taxes are going to be created as people switch to electric cars. There are already cries that the punitive gas tax against driving will become ineffective.

| Government gets its money comes from taxes.

No this is the reverse: the money you use to pay your taxes comes from the state (the currency issuer). Taxes are useful to achieve policy goals or control the money supply to avoid too much inflation, but the government doesn't need to collect money from taxes before it can spend it.

You have no idea how state, county, and city governments work in the US do you? None of those entities can print money. Those parts of government raise money through taxes.

Only the Federal Reserve can print money. The way the rest of the federal government besides the Fed gets money is through taxes and by selling treasury bills and bonds where they promise to pay back the money with interest. Other parts of government can also sell bonds.

If entities believe that a government is running the printing presses there is a currency run and inflation. Ever wonder why assets inflated tremendously the last 8 months relative to the dollar? Ever wonder why the dollar has lost 10% versus other currencies? Things that are fixed in price just got cheaper (like fixed rate mortgages). Things that aren’t, have gone up in price (restaurants, produce, lumber).

Also the running of the presses may add money to the Federal government but may hurt some local governments in the same manner. For example, a city in California dependent on property taxes may have trouble paying its bills when there is a lot of inflation. That is because Prop 13 mandates no more than a 2% increase in property taxes per year. Those private companies that it gets services from will bid at higher prices.

It will be interesting to actually determine infrastructure costs in urban vs suburban areas. I think it is a complicated answer. Is it more expensive to build Are there other alternatives beyond these two choices?

In the case of suburbs it's the opposite. They are the result of unsustainable subsidies granted by a electoral majority to benefit themselves.

What subsidies are you imagining and how is it unsustainable?

Federal Highway subsidies. Federal Mortgage & insurance rules. Tax structures. Federal building guidelines for FHA / HUD programs. Destroying dense mixed use black neighborhoods to build highway interchanges. Federally funded highways and interstates that enable suburban living to be convenient.

The built environment of the United States was a choice. "Forced" through top down "market" incentives.

Not to mention oil subsidies etc

From American Conservative: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-always-...

https://marketurbanism.com/2017/09/05/subsidizing-suburbia-a...

So both the real and the entirely imaginary nudges really bother you, huh?

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