What does this mean exactly? Like we should be forcing people to move into big cities? What about all the people that don't want to live that kind of lifestyle?

Let them pay the $20,000 in rates they will without subsidies from the inner core.

The free market will sort it out in short order.

What about those of us who live in suburban towns that are doing just fine for well over a century and not getting any subsidies from this mythical 'inner core'? From where did you pull that $20K number?

How are you sure your suburb is not getting subsidies from the inner core?

Because the county and city government budgets are public. We get no direct money from the nearest urban core and the only method of transfer would be through the state. We get very little of our yearly revenue through the state general fund, and we pay enough income(and other) tax to completely offset it.

We're self-sustaining primarily through property taxes and have been that way for more than a century.

You're not wrong, but your comments fall on deaf ears.

From the tone of other commenters here, I sense a malicious undercurrent intent on extinguishing rural ways of life - any excuse will suffice.

Then I don't see why you're worrying for government subsidies to be removed from your neighborhoods. I'm sure that paying for the water, road and electricity infrastructure is accounted in your numbers and you won't need anyone else paying for them.

> without subsidies from the inner core

Like how the residents of New York City are able to get the food and water it needs all produced within the five boroughs? Or is that a different kind of "subsidy" from the hinterlands.

A subsidy means you pay less for something than you would on the open market. Cities not only pay the market price for all those products the majority of their taxes go out to the hinterlands on top of that.

Cities pay market price for food coming from the hinterlands but at the same time they pay a subsidy to the same hinterlands that grow that same food? Doesn't sound like market price anymore.

It's nonsensical to say that just because the tax receipts of a suburb doesn't pay in full its roads and bridges, its existence is necessarily subsidized by the rest. Does a city pay in full for its share of the US Navy whose protection of global commerce it depends on to survive? Are cities subsidized by the blood of those in the armed forces, who primarily come from the hinterlands?

The majority of US taxes come from cities. It's the hinterlands that are free riding on the US armed forces.

> It's the hinterlands that are free riding on the US armed forces.

Yet.

"In every region of the country, recruitment rates were higher in rural and exurban counties than in urban counties. Only urban counties in the South had recruitment rates above the national average. Cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West all had rates well below the national average." [1]

[1] https://dailyyonder.com/largest-share-army-recruits-come-rur...

We can always hire cheaper foreign mercenaries. It's not like the current US army is actually needed for defending the US.

It’s absolute numbers that matter, not rates.

Are the hinterlands selling food to cities below cost? Probably not. It's not a subsidy.

Then who's selling roads and bridges and other services to suburbs below cost?

The US government.

Food is produced by rural areas, not by suburbs. Suburbs produce nothing that cities can't produce.

Suburbs produce places for rural residents to get services.

Or were you planning on creating isolated servants in rural area who only work all day and never go anywhere?

In my experience, rural folks go to small towns and small cities for services, not to suburbs. There are no services provided in suburban sprawl except for housing for the residents.

> We should be sunsetting suburbs, not expanding them.

You missed a very good option in between: incrementally densify them, which also has the effect of increasing the tax revenue per unit of infrastructure.

Could you provide a source? I live in a suburban neighborhood built in the 1950s (> 60 yrs ago) bordering a major US city. The neighborhood is thriving (by most metrics) and still relies on a mix of original and upgraded infrastructure.

Complete nonsense. Power lines last 100+ years with little maintenance. Roads may need to be repaved after 30 years, but it's only fraction of the cost of building them from scratch. Stop promoting StrongTowns nonsense, his analysis were shown to be completely off base.

Their infrastructure lifetime numbers may be overly pessimistic, but nothing in your statement rebukes Strong Towns' thesis that the maintenance costs of infrastructure for sprawl were not realistically projected or accounted for.

Suburbs have existed for more than 100 years, and the inner ones have been boxed in that long. They have a proven history of fixing and replacing things.

Older inner denser suburbs, especially those served by mass transit, aren't the issue. It's exurban sprawl.

Those older suburbs are not much denser and they often often don't have transit. People who lived in streetcar suburbs generally expected go get a significant amount of food from their garden which meant lots had to be fairly big, and if you look you discover they were larger lots than current suburbs (or at least that is the case near me). The newer suburbs tend to have dense apartments someplace as well bringing the average up.

Of course new suburbs rarely are built with transit in mind while the oldest were built around the long gone streetcars. This build form doesn't have any affect on solvency though.

> People who lived in streetcar suburbs generally expected go get a significant amount of food from their garden which meant lots had to be fairly big, and if you look you discover they were larger lots than current suburbs (or at least that is the case near me).

It's the opposite in my 1920s streetcar neighborhood (alas without streetcars today). The average lot size is 1/10 acre. That's enough for some small scale gardening (tomatoes, potatoes, broccoli), but nothing that is going to produce a significant amount of food. Walking distance grocery stores (and even street produce vendors) were a big thing in those days. Cars were shoehorned in during the 1950s.

Our lots are tiny compared to the typical suburban California lot, which is more like 1/4 acre, and dwarfed by typical American suburban lot sizes.

> Infrastructure only lasts 30 years

I live in a suburban area that has been around since the early 1900s and we're not suffering infrastructure collapse. Your number smells like BS.

Nah. Maybe you are fine living in a shoebox with 1,000 other people in a single building, but we shouldn't normalize it.

"concrete hive" is the term

You're welcome to live however you want as long as you pay for it.

Right now you're forcing me to pay for your fetishes.

> Right now you're forcing me to pay for your fetishes.

Popular claim made without sourcing any facts.

So 15 years ago, urban dwellers had higher incomes and therefore paid more income tax, and as a result there was a net flow towards rural areas. I wonder if they'd prefer to be paid less.

But the discussion was about suburbs. The number of people living in rural areas is by definition low enough to not be a meaningful concern.