Re:Why Billionaires Don't Pay Property Taxes in New York
by dnr on Thursday May 14, 2015 @04:54PM
(#9547527)
You just switched the subject of the conversation from "luxury condos for wealthy people" to "infrastructure". That's a tricky debate tactic. Of course you have to "grow infrastructure," nobody is arguing that in the abstract, but there's a lot of choices to make about what and how. Luxury condos are one type of thing that can be built, middle-income housing is another. They have different effects on the city. The current incentives that lead developers to building only luxury condos are not a law of nature or economics, they're a result of political choices by the city and state, and they can be changed.
Re:Why Billionaires Don't Pay Property Taxes in New York
by Kalium on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @06:07PM
(#9573486)
Housing is infrastructure. Not building housing is not building infrastructure. If you don't build "luxury condos", then what was intended to be middle-income housing will become "luxury condos" because you failed to build sufficient infrastructure. This is not a hypothesis - this is an empirical observation from every city that's ever tried rent control.
There are exactly zero tricky debate tactics going on here.
Thankfully, this not-fixed number is also not infinite. Just as the housing market also does not need to operate over a fixed quantity of housing. Building more increases that not-fixed quantity so that the not-fixed quantity of demand might be met.
When you have an economic boom, you need to grow your infrastructure to match. Not sit around bemoaning that that might enable future growth that will, to a great degree, happen even if you don't grow infrastructure.
Look no further than the current housing crisis - accurately predicted in 2000 - to see the results of the notion that growing infrastructure is bad because it encourages use of infrastructure.