[geeks] Taxes

[Phil Stracchino]

Sandwich Maker wrote:
> " From: Phil Stracchino <alaric at metrocast.net>
> " The government annually publishes a surveyed state-by-state basic cost 
> " of living for a family of a given size.  Income below that basic cost of 
> " living is tax-free, regardless of how much money you make in total.
> 
> yeah, but that's already unfair.  here in ma, the bcol in boston is
> much higher than in say the berkshires 200mi away.  my own fair little
> city, only ~30mi from boston, is half the cost for things like
> housing.  do the rurals get a free ride or do urbanites get cut off
> at the knees?

In real terms, it's not gonna hurt overall tax revenues much to treat 
the rural folks the same as the urbanites.  It might even encourage 
people to move out of the cities, and frankly, that'd be a good thing 
for many reasons.  Sprawling megacities are horribly inefficient and do 
huge environmental damage.  Decentralization makes much better economic, 
ecological and social sense.  In the vast majority of cases, the economy 
of scale is an illusion created by taking an overly narrow view.


> county by county?  worcester co is big and covers -many- rural
> communities besides the city of worcester.  one single number wouldn't
> be equitable there.
> 
> otoh, the finer the granularity, the more bureaucracy needed to track
> and the more overhead cost...  town by town has to be too much, and
> folks not living within incorporated town borders would escape
> coverage.

Exactly.


-- 
   Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
   alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
          Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                  It's not the years, it's the mileage.