If DC got rid of it's life long entitlements and bloated city government they could cut taxes by 50%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you don' like it, you have options. But wealthy people keep moving into the district. The free market has spoken. Whatever problems DC has, it is attractive to people with means.

Wealthy people are moving to the whole region period. DC gets much less as a percentage of new residents than the suburbs. So in other words DC isn;t attracting as many wealthy people as say Arlington or Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don' like it, you have options. But wealthy people keep moving into the district. The free market has spoken. Whatever problems DC has, it is attractive to people with means.

Wealthy people are moving to the whole region period. DC gets much less as a percentage of new residents than the suburbs. So in other words DC isn;t attracting as many wealthy people as say Arlington or Bethesda.

Well your measure does not make sense. DC has less physical space to expand. The only way to add wealthy people is through gentrification of transitional neighborhoods, and yet it still happens. In Arlington you can tear down a 2,000 square foot home in a nice suburb and build a 5,000 square foot home. I live in North Arlington and love it. But there is a net inflow of wealthy people into the District, and that is significant. DC is too small to ever compete on raw numbers. A better economic measure is this:

Find the cost of a 4500 square foot home on 7500 feet of land that is 6 blocks from the metro. What is the price in Arlington? What is the price in the District? Bethesda? The market does not lie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that study was absurd, and way off the mark. To pay that much in car taxes, you would have to have a $40K car each every year. If you buy a normal car and keep it for 5-6 years, then the car taxes are a fraction of what shown in that study, and Virginia has by far the lowest taxes.

No it doesn't. You read the table wrong. It assumes one of the two cars is a 15,000 car, and the other is a 40,000 car. In Arlington, the average family around me is driving one nice sedan and one nice minivan. Does that add up to 55,000 of car value? Heck, yes it does.

and you get that car replaced each year? of course not. cars depreciate quickly. we have a 2005 bmw and 2005 saab, and our car tax bill is about $400 ...

Well that's because both of your cars are six years old and you get a lot of the tax reduced by the car tax relief program. But if you had a new car the tax on that car would be high for the first three years or so, because the car tax relief applies only to the first 20,000 of value.

point is, the study assumes you have $60K in taxable car value every year. In my experience, that would be very unusual for a family in Fairfax County with a $150HHI. My neighbors all probably make around that, and they, like us, get a new car about once every five years. I definitely agree that if you buy two nice new cars every year, the taxes would be cheaper living in the District.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that study was absurd, and way off the mark. To pay that much in car taxes, you would have to have a $40K car each every year. If you buy a normal car and keep it for 5-6 years, then the car taxes are a fraction of what shown in that study, and Virginia has by far the lowest taxes.

No it doesn't. You read the table wrong. It assumes one of the two cars is a 15,000 car, and the other is a 40,000 car. In Arlington, the average family around me is driving one nice sedan and one nice minivan. Does that add up to 55,000 of car value? Heck, yes it does.

and you get that car replaced each year? of course not. cars depreciate quickly. we have a 2005 bmw and 2005 saab, and our car tax bill is about $400 ...

Well that's because both of your cars are six years old and you get a lot of the tax reduced by the car tax relief program. But if you had a new car the tax on that car would be high for the first three years or so, because the car tax relief applies only to the first 20,000 of value.

point is, the study assumes you have $60K in taxable car value every year. In my experience, that would be very unusual for a family in Fairfax County with a $150HHI. My neighbors all probably make around that, and they, like us, get a new car about once every five years. I definitely agree that if you buy two nice new cars every year, the taxes would be cheaper living in the District.

But if you have a two car family, that works out to a new car and a three year old car in year one, a one year old car and a four year old car in year two, a two year old car and a five year old car in year 3, and then a new car and a three year old car in year four (back to start). Tax-wise, those are pretty close to the assumptions in the model.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don' like it, you have options. But wealthy people keep moving into the district. The free market has spoken. Whatever problems DC has, it is attractive to people with means.

Wealthy people are moving to the whole region period. DC gets much less as a percentage of new residents than the suburbs. So in other words DC isn;t attracting as many wealthy people as say Arlington or Bethesda.

Well your measure does not make sense. DC has less physical space to expand. The only way to add wealthy people is through gentrification of transitional neighborhoods, and yet it still happens. In Arlington you can tear down a 2,000 square foot home in a nice suburb and build a 5,000 square foot home. I live in North Arlington and love it. But there is a net inflow of wealthy people into the District, and that is significant. DC is too small to ever compete on raw numbers. A better economic measure is this:

Find the cost of a 4500 square foot home on 7500 feet of land that is 6 blocks from the metro. What is the price in Arlington? What is the price in the District? Bethesda? The market does not lie.

Ok so you don't live in DC. Soooo just keep walking. First of all DC's population is down from a high of 800k, so until we get back to that number we've still lost population since the 60s. Secondly there are tons of places in DC where you could build 5,000sq ft homes, look at Philips Park or the tract of land right near Maret or the large spaces off of Colorado for example. Hopefully more of these leeches move out in to Virginia and you can support them with your tax dollars since you seem so eager to do so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:that study was absurd, and way off the mark. To pay that much in car taxes, you would have to have a $40K car each every year. If you buy a normal car and keep it for 5-6 years, then the car taxes are a fraction of what shown in that study, and Virginia has by far the lowest taxes.

No it doesn't. You read the table wrong. It assumes one of the two cars is a 15,000 car, and the other is a 40,000 car. In Arlington, the average family around me is driving one nice sedan and one nice minivan. Does that add up to 55,000 of car value? Heck, yes it does.

and you get that car replaced each year? of course not. cars depreciate quickly. we have a 2005 bmw and 2005 saab, and our car tax bill is about $400 ...

Well that's because both of your cars are six years old and you get a lot of the tax reduced by the car tax relief program. But if you had a new car the tax on that car would be high for the first three years or so, because the car tax relief applies only to the first 20,000 of value.

point is, the study assumes you have $60K in taxable car value every year. In my experience, that would be very unusual for a family in Fairfax County with a $150HHI. My neighbors all probably make around that, and they, like us, get a new car about once every five years. I definitely agree that if you buy two nice new cars every year, the taxes would be cheaper living in the District.

But if you have a two car family, that works out to a new car and a three year old car in year one, a one year old car and a four year old car in year two, a two year old car and a five year old car in year 3, and then a new car and a three year old car in year four (back to start). Tax-wise, those are pretty close to the assumptions in the model.

not even close. run the #s for a normal nice car like a Toyota Camry and a Honda Pilot. People with $150K HHI are not buying two 7 series BMWs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are "life-long entitlements," and who gets them?

It's the rant that came up when he shook the "Conservative Rant Edition Magic 8-ball".

Ahh yess. And you go back to the typical liberal playbook. Don't acknowledge the other side's argument but rather try and ridicule them. You act like DC doesn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars on welfare, life long welfare for most (even Marion Barry admits it) and this is starting to take a toll. Rather you make fun of me because if you agreed then you would have to actually do something about the problem.

Umm, I'm still waiting for someone to answer my question about what "life-long entitlements" are. OP, are you game?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are "life-long entitlements," and who gets them?

It's the rant that came up when he shook the "Conservative Rant Edition Magic 8-ball".

Ahh yess. And you go back to the typical liberal playbook. Don't acknowledge the other side's argument but rather try and ridicule them. You act like DC doesn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars on welfare, life long welfare for most (even Marion Barry admits it) and this is starting to take a toll. Rather you make fun of me because if you agreed then you would have to actually do something about the problem.

Umm, I'm still waiting for someone to answer my question about what "life-long entitlements" are. OP, are you game?

I'm not the OP, but what I believe (s)he is referring to is that DC does not have any time limits on public assistance. A person can stay on welfare for his or her entire life. At least that's my guess (although OP's a little nutty, so who can say).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don' like it, you have options. But wealthy people keep moving into the district. The free market has spoken. Whatever problems DC has, it is attractive to people with means.

Wealthy people are moving to the whole region period. DC gets much less as a percentage of new residents than the suburbs. So in other words DC isn;t attracting as many wealthy people as say Arlington or Bethesda.

That's because there's more housing in the burbs. Population growth is higher in the suburbs than in DC because there's lots of cheap sprawling housing. The suburbs have a much higher growth of poverty than DC.

DC real estate is the most expensive per square foot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don' like it, you have options. But wealthy people keep moving into the district. The free market has spoken. Whatever problems DC has, it is attractive to people with means.

Wealthy people are moving to the whole region period. DC gets much less as a percentage of new residents than the suburbs. So in other words DC isn;t attracting as many wealthy people as say Arlington or Bethesda.

Well your measure does not make sense. DC has less physical space to expand. The only way to add wealthy people is through gentrification of transitional neighborhoods, and yet it still happens. In Arlington you can tear down a 2,000 square foot home in a nice suburb and build a 5,000 square foot home. I live in North Arlington and love it. But there is a net inflow of wealthy people into the District, and that is significant. DC is too small to ever compete on raw numbers. A better economic measure is this:

Find the cost of a 4500 square foot home on 7500 feet of land that is 6 blocks from the metro. What is the price in Arlington? What is the price in the District? Bethesda? The market does not lie.

Ok so you don't live in DC. Soooo just keep walking. First of all DC's population is down from a high of 800k, so until we get back to that number we've still lost population since the 60s. Secondly there are tons of places in DC where you could build 5,000sq ft homes, look at Philips Park or the tract of land right near Maret or the large spaces off of Colorado for example. Hopefully more of these leeches move out in to Virginia and you can support them with your tax dollars since you seem so eager to do so.

Do *you* live in DC? Because you don't seem to know much about the city, or its demographic trends. The collapse of DC population has come almost entirely because poor and working class families are moving out of the city. They're being replaced by wealthy middle and upper middle class DINKs and small families.

[Anonymous]

1359, I agree with you on the demographics, but what is a DINK

[Anonymous]

Double Income No Kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you don' like it, you have options. But wealthy people keep moving into the district. The free market has spoken. Whatever problems DC has, it is attractive to people with means.

Wealthy people are moving to the whole region period. DC gets much less as a percentage of new residents than the suburbs. So in other words DC isn;t attracting as many wealthy people as say Arlington or Bethesda.

Well your measure does not make sense. DC has less physical space to expand. The only way to add wealthy people is through gentrification of transitional neighborhoods, and yet it still happens. In Arlington you can tear down a 2,000 square foot home in a nice suburb and build a 5,000 square foot home. I live in North Arlington and love it. But there is a net inflow of wealthy people into the District, and that is significant. DC is too small to ever compete on raw numbers. A better economic measure is this:

Find the cost of a 4500 square foot home on 7500 feet of land that is 6 blocks from the metro. What is the price in Arlington? What is the price in the District? Bethesda? The market does not lie.

Ok so you don't live in DC. Soooo just keep walking. First of all DC's population is down from a high of 800k, so until we get back to that number we've still lost population since the 60s. Secondly there are tons of places in DC where you could build 5,000sq ft homes, look at Philips Park or the tract of land right near Maret or the large spaces off of Colorado for example. Hopefully more of these leeches move out in to Virginia and you can support them with your tax dollars since you seem so eager to do so.

Do *you* live in DC? Because you don't seem to know much about the city, or its demographic trends. The collapse of DC population has come almost entirely because poor and working class families are moving out of the city. They're being replaced by wealthy middle and upper middle class DINKs and small families.

And that's a bad thing because.....

[Anonymous]

It's not a bad thing at all. But its annoying when people talk about DC like it is a complete welfare state or that the taxes are so bad - wealthy folks are still moving here despite all of these negatives. Folks don't make that kind of choice without getting some perceived value in return - whether its living in a walkable neighborhood, access to public transit, nightlife and culture.

I thought there was a push recently to get rid of the lifelong public assistance entitlements - if I am not mistaken Barry was in favor of it. As a native DC'er I think we should get rid of the lifelong status as well but I don't think social services are the big tax drag everyone paints them out to be either.

[Anonymous]

21:04 you are correct. Yvette Alexander and Marion Barry introduced legislation to limit TANF for 5 years, or whatever the federal guidelines provide. I don't know what happened with that legislation.