The front page of today’s New York Times tells the sad story of Los Angeles’ crumbling infrastructure. Roadways, sidewalks
and water pipes are in a state of decay thanks to several decades of tight
municipal budgets. Close to 40% of LA’s roads are graded D or F. The average
age of a city water pipe is 58 years. More than 4,000 miles of sidewalk—37% of
all pedestrian walkways in the city—are in severe disrepair. A nonprofit
transportation research group says that the average LA driver spends $842 a
year just on car repairs resulting from the bad roads. How much more does fixing
the water damage from broken pipes cost residents each year?
In total, city officials estimate that it will take $8.1
billion to fix the worst roads, repair the sidewalks and replace aging water
pipes. Much of the Times article bemoans this expense in light of the total LA city
budget of just $26 billion.
But $8.1 billion should be chump change for LA, a city with
a population of about 3.85 million.
Let’s do the math, something that the Times and the city officials and experts quoted in the article fail
to do. $8.1 billion breaks down to $2,085.30 per person living in the City of
Los Angeles. If bringing the LA
infrastructure up to snuff were financed over 10 years, it would cost less than
$210 per person per year, or $420 per year if only households in the top half
of the annual income spectrum were obligated to pay for these necessary
infrastructure improvements. In the scenario in which the top half of
income-earners were assessed the entire bill to fix what’s broke with LA roads,
sidewalks and water pipes, the poorest taxpayers paying the assessment would
see an additional 7/10ths of a percent in income taxed. But on average, these
people would save a minimum of $422 overall, since auto repair costs would
plummet.
Now one could make a very strong argument that the roads,
water pipes and sidewalks of the City of Los Angeles serve all residents of the
county. If we therefore spread the costs over all 10 million residents of Los Angeles
County, it would compute to $810 per resident, or $81 per year for 10 years, or
$161 per year if only the top half of income earners paid.
If presented with the option of spending $81 of $161 more
per year for 10 years and getting safer and faster highways, more efficient water systems and more walkable
pedestrian ways (probably not of too much interest to Angelinos, who seem to
prefer riding in cars), most county residents would vote “yes.”
But of course, we’re never presented with the costs broken
down in such a common sense way. We get the big number and a lot of
hand-wringing from politicians. And in
all too many cases such as the Times article,
we’re reminded how much of the municipal budget is dedicated to paying the
pensions of former city workers. The implication of course is that if we walked
away from our commitment to pay pensions—as many on the right would like us to
do—we’d have the money to pay for maintaining highway and water pipes.
In Los Angeles, and throughout the country, we are seeing
the disastrous end-game of the lower tax philosophy that began strangling the
nation some 35 years ago. The big idea behind the brand of conservatism called
Reaganism has always been to starve government. Now we know what anorexic
government looks like: Pot holes everywhere. Frequent flooding from broken
water pipes. More slip and fall accidents. Larger school classes. A gutting of
extracurricular activities and enrichment courses such as art and music in
public schools. Public colleges that are unaffordable to many of a state’s
citizens. Inadequate mass transit.
And what did lower taxes get people? Not much unless you’re
wealthy or upper middle class, since those are the people who have received the
lion’s share of the income transferred to private individuals through reducing
federal, state and local tax rates so many times since 1980.
Also think of these numbers: Trillions of dollars spent to
destabilize Iraq through invasion (not to mention thousands of American and
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives). $34 billion in grant funding from the Department of Homeland Security to militarize
local police department with sophisticated vehicles and weaponry meant for
wars, not domestic policing.
Anyone interested in
the future of our country should judge all elected officials on their
willingness or lack of willingness to raise taxes. Don’t vote for anyone who
wants to lower taxes. Actively support anyone who explicitly states they want
to raise taxes on the wealthy, near wealthy or businesses. It doesn’t matter
that much what the candidate wants to do with the money—we have pressing needs
in education, infrastructure development, mass transit, development of
alternative energy sources and cleaning the environment. It doesn’t matter, as
long as the candidate doesn’t want to use additional tax revenues to pay for
more guns or tax breaks to businesses.
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