Strong Towns

[Anthony '58]

(12-16-2021, 01:17 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(12-16-2021, 12:43 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-16-2021, 09:22 AM)Anthony Wrote: It's better to live in a home that you yourself own in Manchester Township, New Jersey, roughly halfway between NYC and Philadelphia, where public transportation is essentially non-existent, and believe it or not has the lowest per-capita income in the entire state - even Newark and Camden have higher per-capita incomes - than live in a dilapidated SRO in San Francisco (I've done that too).

Retirees live in Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida.  Out west, it's in and around Las Vegas.  No one retires to San Francisco ... or LA for that matter.

Tennessee has favorable taxes for retirees, as the state has huge sales taxes and practically no income tax (interest and dividends are taxable). This is the opposite of what one needs in a place full of young workers who have to buy big-ticket stuff (cars, clothes, furniture, appliances, and consumer electronics) with low incomes (as is typical for people starting out in life or starting families). 

The dream for those who are super-rich is that people pay heavy taxes on consumption items (which can  include food) while the people that those super-rich see as the most deserving of favorable treatment because they are the only  people who matter as they are the only investors (or heirs of such) pay practically no taxes on income. Such is a heritage of a plantation-based economy in which the planters were the only people with cash, but their plantations were largely self-contained so that slaves produced the food for local consumption and the cash crop of tobacco or cotton, and little money needed circulate within the plantation. There was little finance, retailing, or other service industry. The urban bourgeoisie, slight as it was, had to pay consumption taxes or income taxes as they were the only ones with cash. 

It is difficult to escape a political or economic heritage short of a proletarian revolution, and I am not saying that a Commie revolution is a good idea (the high body count and that the administrators act much like an aristocracy).

Southern states have favorable income taxes - but most have them have very high, and very regressive, sales taxes.

If you want to move to a fair tax state and you don't have a lot of money, then Oregon is for you: No sales tax, and a steeply graduated income tax.

Just stay out of the Portland area and housing costs are extremely reasonable.