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Ok, it might be because most of the NoCo people I know have already left for St. Charles or Madison County.
Nonetheless though, it still bugs me when I hear folks from West County, Mid-County, or South County harping on St. Charles. As if they ever had to deal with plummeting property values, rising crime, and declining schools...
Yep, didn't see a whole lot of HUD in Ladue, Huntleigh, Frontenac, etc, the way it was thrown on unincorporated north STL county. It's the typical "not in my backyard" syndrome.
Ok, it might be because most of the NoCo people I know have already left for St. Charles or Madison County.
Nonetheless though, it still bugs me when I hear folks from West County, Mid-County, or South County harping on St. Charles. As if they ever had to deal with plummeting property values, rising crime, and declining schools...
Well, that gets into a whole other conversation about capital flight and so on. What I think people always miss about sprawl is that moving away makes a great deal of individual financial sense to the people making decisions, because the negatives are substantial but externalized. Collectively, sprawl and white flight are expensive and disastrous phenomenons, but they persist through individual decision-making. It doesn't make sense to harangue individuals into taking a bullet for the team and staying put in a failing neighborhood; it's a problem that requires collective action (like addressing poverty directly, or cutting subsidies for sprawl development).
But then, nowadays a lot of people (including the MO legislature) view any kind of collective problem-solving as an existential threat to their way of life, which only compounds the problem.
So lemme' get this straight, subsidies for roads are acceptable, but not for transit? You do realize that every county in MO has some form of transit service, that not every citizen is capable of operating a vehicle?
People pay gas taxes and other taxes subsidize the rest. People pay transit fares and other taxes subsidize the rest. Same concept.
I personally think that user fees are the best way to pay for any transportation, but that is besides the point. I merely mentioned, and above you agreed this is true, that other taxes subsidize the portions that are not paid for by the user fees (gas taxes, bus fares). That is why I mentioned I paid a significant amount in income taxes. I do pay my own way, and in crunching the numbers, a lot of other peoples' way too.
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Scattered across the state. Apparently no outstate city can muster more than one or two universities. Springfield maybe, I'll give you that.
My point is that the rest of the state has a whole lot more in aggregate to offer than just St. Louis does. Which in going back to the original post, would make St. Louis a very non-viable "51st State"
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And in sarcastic reference to your fiscal beliefs, all of those are state-run schools that would starve without the trough of state tax dollars. I don't want to be funding schools that are 200 miles from my doorstep. Perhaps outstate can't sustain large-cap private sector education?
I agree with you on that one. I would much rather universities be paid for by users rather than taxpayers funding institutions, personnel, and degree programs that have little real value. However, even "public" universities actually have little state funding so we are not that far off from that goal. The University of Missouri System for example gets only 13.4% of its funding from the state as appropriations for education. The largest single category for the UM System for revenue is actually medical charges from the University of Missouri Health system, second is tuition, and tuition is about 50% more in total dollars than state educational appropriations.
I personally think that user fees are the best way to pay for any transportation, but that is besides the point. I merely mentioned, and above you agreed this is true, that other taxes subsidize the portions that are not paid for by the user fees (gas taxes, bus fares).
The problem with 100% user fees is that a lot of people don't get paid enough to afford them. So instituting a rule of fee-only, tax-free transit funding effectively means that cashiers and bus boys are only allowed to live within their personal maximum walking distance of their place of employment. Since many of the people in favor of taking away tax-paid subsidies of buses also don't want poor people living near them, I doubt such a policy would last very long.
Not true, and again you have to crunch the numbers. MODOT's http://http://www.modot.org/about/do...alSnapshot.pdf FY2015 financial documents show that $2.2 billion was spent on transportation in MO for FY2015. Missouri has a population of 6.08 million according to 2015 data, which means that the cost per citizen is $361.84 per year, or $30.15 per month. Even if you exclude minors who cannot work, that is still only about $40/month per adult. That's at the very most 2/3 of your monthly smartphone budget, at best about half of your cable/satellite TV bill, or about 40% as much as a one pack a day smoking habit assuming you smoke low-midrange cigarettes rather than Camels or Marbs. It's also two fifths a month of middle-shelf whiskey, a fuzz more than one bottle of Boulevard a day, one dinner for two at an average restaurant a month, and over the course of a year it will only cost a little more than a pair of the very popular Beats headphones you see a lot of young people who you would expect to work as a cashier or a busboy wearing. I don't see these discretionary products I listed that cost as much or more being significantly affected even by the poor economy, so it's highly unlikely that a $40/month user fee would bankrupt very many people.
The problem with 100% user fees is that a lot of people don't get paid enough to afford them. So instituting a rule of fee-only, tax-free transit funding effectively means that cashiers and bus boys are only allowed to live within their personal maximum walking distance of their place of employment. Since many of the people in favor of taking away tax-paid subsidies of buses also don't want poor people living near them, I doubt such a policy would last very long.
That's because most people working in St. Louis are vastly underpaid in comparison to the majority of other towns/cities.
Oh but the housing is cheap here, and there's always Forest Park and the "free" Zoo...
Not true, and again you have to crunch the numbers. MODOT's http://http://www.modot.org/about/do...alSnapshot.pdf FY2015 financial documents show that $2.2 billion was spent on transportation in MO for FY2015. Missouri has a population of 6.08 million according to 2015 data, which means that the cost per citizen is $361.84 per year, or $30.15 per month. Even if you exclude minors who cannot work, that is still only about $40/month per adult. That's at the very most 2/3 of your monthly smartphone budget, at best about half of your cable/satellite TV bill, or about 40% as much as a one pack a day smoking habit assuming you smoke low-midrange cigarettes rather than Camels or Marbs. It's also two fifths a month of middle-shelf whiskey, a fuzz more than one bottle of Boulevard a day, one dinner for two at an average restaurant a month, and over the course of a year it will only cost a little more than a pair of the very popular Beats headphones you see a lot of young people who you would expect to work as a cashier or a busboy wearing. I don't see these discretionary products I listed that cost as much or more being significantly affected even by the poor economy, so it's highly unlikely that a $40/month user fee would bankrupt very many people.
$39/month is the current Reduced Fare monthly pass, the normal amount is $78/month. Fares cover 22% of transit costs, so if you're assuming we aren't offering reduced fare passes (since we're against subsidizing anything, after all), that's $400/month for a pass, i.e. a couple week's wages for a lot of people.
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Originally Posted by carloslevy
That's because most people working in St. Louis are vastly underpaid in comparison to the majority of other towns/cities.
Oh but the housing is cheap here, and there's always Forest Park and the "free" Zoo...
People are vastly underpaid but that's true across America. I think there's a strong argument for removing some welfare/subsidies and substituting it with sane wages, but you can't do the former without the latter.
That's because most people working in St. Louis are vastly underpaid in comparison to the majority of other towns/cities.
Oh but the housing is cheap here, and there's always Forest Park and the "free" Zoo...
I personally think that user fees are the best way to pay for any transportation, but that is besides the point. I merely mentioned, and above you agreed this is true, that other taxes subsidize the portions that are not paid for by the user fees (gas taxes, bus fares). That is why I mentioned I paid a significant amount in income taxes. I do pay my own way, and in crunching the numbers, a lot of other peoples' way too. My point is that the rest of the state has a whole lot more in aggregate to offer than just St. Louis does. Which in going back to the original post, would make St. Louis a very non-viable "51st State" I agree with you on that one. I would much rather universities be paid for by users rather than taxpayers funding institutions, personnel, and degree programs that have little real value. However, even "public" universities actually have little state funding so we are not that far off from that goal. The University of Missouri System for example gets only 13.4% of its funding from the state as appropriations for education. The largest single category for the UM System for revenue is actually medical charges from the University of Missouri Health system, second is tuition, and tuition is about 50% more in total dollars than state educational appropriations.
User fees don't come close to covering costs generated by cars though. MODOT is basically revenue neutral, but they're only getting there because they are deferring maintenance. It's not sustainable. That ignores the cost of local roads (property taxes). It ignores the cost of off street parking: lost property tax revenue for unimproved land not to mention the fact that the costs associated with a Schnucks parking lot is passed on to customers, whether you park a car at the store or not. It ignores the cost of on street parking (extra lane covered through property taxes). It ignores increase runoff and the need for higher capacity sewerage. It ignores the cost of car induced investment and disinvestment. People build homes on greenfield sites on the edge of development. Costs related to construction of homes, utility services, more roads, new schools, new retail, etc are incurred. Pre-existing infrastructure and services people are moving away from carry the same maintenance costs with lower levels of revenue support as a result. The user fee myth is just that. A myth. If the true cost of these things was included in automobile ownership, then we wouldn't live the way we do. We'd be living in much more dense environments where the cost of car use would be high and the cost of transit would be distributed among more people in dense urban neighborhoods. Which would probably be a good thing. Where it would make sense to use cars, we would, because productivity gains would offset the marginal "true" cost.
Education is similar, but in the opposite direction. The benefits of education extend far beyond the person receiving the education. Workforce pool, access of education/economic mobility reducing multigenerational poverty (which leads to crime, public safety net subsidies, etc). People who can afford the cost of higher ed need people who can't afford higher Ed to receive it so skills can be combined to form businesses, provide a high degree of skilled services demanded in the marketplace, etc. It would be nice to think that the private sector would provide a subsidy on higher ed to allow the user fee model to work up front, but it doesn't work that way because corporations are frequently very short sighted because their investors are short sighted. Why pay for skilled apprenticeships when there is enough labor currently? Will they pay workers more to offset the cost of higher ed? They aren't currently. And if the labor supply dries up, they will to a point...until labor elsewhere with access to state funded ed becomes relatively cheaper...in which case they offshore those jobs. There are free rider issues too. Company A might want to sink 100k into a worker to replace the cost of a finance degree at school. Company B doesn't. Company B offers a fully trained employee a bit more money to lure them from Company A, avoiding the training cost and productivity lag. Education is one of those things that an economy needs to subsidize collectively or it doesn't work. I'm not advocating for "free". There needs to be some cost covered by the student. Otherwise you end up with unemployed grads or underemployed grads selling shoes. The cost can't be so high that it undermines labor force development and economic productivity though.
That's because most people working in St. Louis are vastly underpaid in comparison to the majority of other towns/cities.
Oh but the housing is cheap here, and there's always Forest Park and the "free" Zoo...
I used to live in St. Louis and thought that salaries were low compared to other parts of the country and that it was in part because there were a lot of people who grew up there and didn't want to live anywhere else and so were willing to accept lower wages to do so.
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