jon c. 

A thread about taxation belongs in P & R. Personally, I'm happy to pay my taxes. I like living in the first world and I'm willing to pay for it. You want to live in a nice place you gotta pay for it. The rest of the thread is nonsense. No one is going to force people to give up their cars. Sure, there will always be a voice or two out there trending in that direction but that doesn't come close to representing widespread movement. A few of the largest and most crowded cities in the world are trying to limit city center traffic to avoid gridlock. Makes perfect sense. No one wants to drive in those conditions anyway.

rykard

They have cameras all around London, and every other city, reading your number plate and automatically fining/charging you. We have average speed cameras here that go for miles of road.. The technology is there an has been for years.

SkinGriz

I read years ago that the cameras were installed to cut down in street crime.

How did that pan out?

SkinGriz

Opposite. Taxes are a sign of lack of civility. Anything taken by coercion or threat of violence.

base2 

So you are totally fine with forgoing all the services you use? Services like a tax payer funded potable water system or tax payer funded sewage transport and treatment? What about tax payer provided roads to tax payer owned public lands to hunt or fish tax payer owned animals while breathing tax payer protected breathable air and floating your boat on tax-payer owned water?...I mean, really you wouldn't consider taking all those things for your own personal exclusive use with out paying for it or anything would you? I shudder to think you of engaging in the uncivil behavior of theft for your own private gain at everyone else's expense.

You are on a computer using electricity...Off-grid system like a true independent man? Or does it arrive by way of wires affixed to poles on the tax-payer owned right of way? Should you, the tax-payer not be compensated for each 2 square feet of real estate each pole uses? I bet the power company would love to be freed of that expense.

Wi-fi or cellular? How do you use it with out utilizing the tax-payer owned and protected radiological spectrum? Perhaps you have some new technological breakthrough in energy transmission that doesn't use radio wave of any frequency? Quantum super-positioning? Do tell. How did you get such a device with out crossing any taxpayer owed border or tax payer negotiated trade agreement? You make your own electronic components from materials derived on your own land? You must be very, very rich & exceedingly resourceful.

Please enlighten us all how you, a man of infallible integrity, exist as a true and independent free man in a hermetically sealed bubble adjacent to this dimensional plane of reality?

Bully4

You lost me with the air--I don't recall any entity being able to sell or tax it yet! BTW- I also have a well. Guess you own that water, too! Boats require a license, hunting licenses help cover the costs associated with hunting.
I pay taxes as well on everything I use. My concern is that is spent wisely for its intended purpose. In total, that I figure is probably getting close to 50% of a person's overall wages. What is "fair share"? Seems to me that it's a moving target.

Let's agree to disagree.

Bully4

John C is right, this thread is off the rails. Sorry for getting carried away. I haven't been to a large city for years. Hope things work out. I'll have to take your word for it. I'll be too cheap to drive through and check.

I would venture a guess that everybody on here would be able to meet for a ride and probably have a good time. We all have different opinions; they don't always have to match to find common ground.

base2 

https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-ov...-air-pollutionhttps://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-ov...-air-pollution


We all are concerned that money is spent wisely in a fiscally responsible manner. That is why population density (& the concept of a 15 minute city) makes a lot of sense. Quite simply the pipe in the street or whatever piece of infrastructure you wish to discuss, is utilized to a much higher average capacity with much greater utilization with the cost spread over a larger pool of tax payers even though the installation costs and lifespan and replacement costs are the same as that same pipe feeding a low value per acer area. Urban density is the fiscally responsible model.

SkinGriz

Logical fallacy of false dichotomy.
Doesn’t address voluntary vs coercive.

“Please enlighten us all how you, a man of infallible integrity, exist as a true and independent free man in a hermetically sealed bubble adjacent to this dimensional plane of reality?”

And finally the logical flaw that every aspect of another way of doing things needs to be detailed out ahead of time, when that same assumption isn’t held constant.

SkinGriz

I like 15 minute cities, as long as I’m not forced to stay.

It can get really ****** really fast when the city becomes a ghost town. Or if someone more enlightened than you decides to put a wall around the city and prevent you from leaving.

FBinNY 

Has anyone started a pool for when the mods either close this or move it to P&R?

If not, and if others, like me, believe the end is near, I'd like to put 5 bucks on post #65.

base2 

I don't wanna by Richard Mozzarella, on Flickr

Do you not see the contradiction between a dense vibrant walkable city that is diverse, interesting, full of opportunity & wealth and the hollowed out ghost town you are scared it could become? A building occupied is never vacant. It can never be blight. That is key. Mult-use buildings easily configured to whatever use or mix of uses appropriate to that time and place. Shops, manufacturing, grocery, tailors, bakeries, appliance or furniture sales, etc...on the ground floor put business ventures both within reach of residents but within reach of proprietors to take a gamble on the future. While residential in the floors above provides a steady stream of foot traffic to see the proprietors wares. Free-market capitalism works better.

If you are taking most American towns that can barely support a Dollar General as the soul sign of any economic activity at all as your inspiration...I don't know what to tell you except Main Street was bull-dozed for the car and whatever model that town was built on was shucked out the window long ago in favor of the least density as possible and no services rendered from single use buildings with onerous parking requirements depriving the land owner of the freedom to build out his land in the most effective way possible. They followed the opposite model of the 15 minute city.

A single use Chik-fil-a can only be a Chick-fil-a and will only be so for about 15 years while only supplying fraction of the taxes to the city as the 1920's multi-use building it replaced. And the car dependent nature of far-flung residents trying to get to that temporary single-use building ensures that the cost of maintaining those roads will weigh very heavy on the towns balance books. That's poor planning if the city even had a plan at all.

Roads and houses do not create economic output but they do have a very high cost. It's no wonder people leave as soon as they are able for greener pastures. Their town is bankrupt or eventually becomes bankrupt and unable to keep up with the cost of running a town and the personal cost of living there is too high.

Many people consider being near amenities, services, opportunity to be in their rational best self interest. The concept of the 15 minute city in urban planning arrived organically from this realization.

Do you have any examples of any cities that were walled off and isolated? Is there one example of a town in say Kansas or wherever with a McDonalds & a Wal-mart that "They" walled in and held the voting tax-payers captive? How many miles of fencing is that?

cooker

The state motto is not "use our highways for free". Somebody has to pay for them. Do you not think you should? Highways are socialist and costs are shared. If they were capitalist they would all be tolled, right down to back alleys, and you would pay a lot more.

I-Like-To-Bike

Care to name some recent examples where free-market capitalism is at work with dense vibrant walkable city that are diverse, interesting, full of opportunity & wealth in the U.S.?

Please omit naming small neighborhoods (outliers) in a cities that as a whole are not walkable, nor full of opportunity/wealth for a diverse population; also omit relatively small towns dominated by large university and associated employment and transient student body that can hardly be described as having a diverse population or any manufacturing or business ventures not dependent on the University.

base2 

The problem presented from a few different angles:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...stments-md2020

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/5/10/lafayette


https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...y-has-no-money


...And the solution:
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/...city-wealthier
Lafayette is doing much better once they figured out where their wealth was and came up with a plan.

Bully4

Seems to me like they're working towards it!