Comment by dzdt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dzdt | Hacker News Reader

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The leading example in the article is Carmel, Indiana. I am not sure what has been done there should be described as a model of competent governance. This is a small city (100k people/50k workers/37k households [1]) where the city has taken on major amounts of debt (1.4$billion/14k per person/28k per worker/38k per household) to create public amenities.

The financial logic of what Carmel is doing centers around zero-sum competition with neighboring communities. Carmel is betting that by being the nicest place with the fanciest amenities, they will attract the richest families and be able to support that heavy debt burden in the coming decades.

This is explicitly not a model that every community could follow! It relies on spending more than would be prudent for the current tax base, in the hopes of standing out in comparison to other communities. And for sure its a bet that could fail badly, depending on general economic conditions. Its too soon to tell if the gamble will work out successfully, and very hard to tell even in hindsight how risky it was, succeed or fail.

[1] https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/IN/Carmel-Demogr...

If you look at the average household income in Carmel, IN. Then compare it to, say, Darien, CT.

Then consider, Darien's per capita debt load works out to about 2% of the average annual per capita income. Carmel's per capita debt load works out to roughly 25-30% of its average annual per capita income. (And that's being kind and using the average per capita income. It gets even uglier for Carmel if we do these comparisons at the median.)

Given all that, it's not hard at all to bet on failure.

You can play at being Darien if you have Darien money. If you don't, you're just being fiscally irresponsible. There's nothing about the Carmel story that says 'competence'.

You have to incorporate county and state debt per taxpayer if you are comparing a locale in different governments.

Connecticut has a very high (multiple standard deviation above the norm) retiree benefit debt, due to decades of underfunding. But these numbers are not easily comparable because there are no strict rules around how taxpayer funded DB and retiree healthcare debt is calculated.

It just shows up as a bigger and bigger proportion of government expenses.

Didn't the guy also refers to Mike Dugger's work in Detroit

Comparing Detroit to Singapore is pretty silly in my eyes. The second derivative for Detroit has been good for about twenty years, but the city has been decaying around economic events and poor business diversification.

Connect the Q-Line out towards Oakland County and to the People Mover. Get that train going to the airport. There are real infrastructure needs here and it doesn't take a lot to imagine them.

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