On the state of Pittsburgh:
“I am relieved we do not live in the City of Pittsburgh. We avoid it. We have transferred all our doctors’ appointments to the northern suburbs along with our lawyer.
“City residents will have to foot the bill if the city coffers cannot meet the budget and the COVID monies dry up. Good luck on raising the money for all the boondoggle projects the city fathers want to undertake.
“These politicians are either stupid or economically blind, along with a lack of common sense.
“It will be interesting to see how it will all work out. Will the citizens of the city who voted these people into office wake up and reject these pie-in-the-sky projects or go along and pay the increased taxes and continue to put up with the gross inefficiency and hypocrisy of these [elected officials]?
“Watching Pittsburgh politics for over 50 years, I believe city politics and business will continue as usual.”
On the state of PRT:
“When [Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT)] route cuts eliminated all buses on my side of Highland Park and the remaining bus did not service my work destination, I Googled transit options to arrive when required and was provided the result of ‘walk.’
“Other intermittent use has found PRT to be on loose time schedules, requiring more of my time to make up for their less than predictableness.
“Google long provided a better source of routes and times than the [former] Port Authority of Allegheny County site; PRT’s is simply impertinent by legacy.
“I chose to ride my bicycle and have an unofficial survey, from 2009 to present, of the buses’ routes and stop frequencies. PRT is nothing but a social engineering service: In Garfield, on Penn Avenue, buses stop on every corner — riders aren’t expected to walk 20 yards.
“On top of the drivers being some of the biggest jerks on the roadways, vehicle size not corrected [for volume], public transit around here is due a shakedown. It is a patron service to buy votes from the underclasses.
“Folks who work and would like to get there on time but wish not to add to vehicle congestion, emissions and wear and tear on a vehicle are not primarily welcome.”
On the state of Westmoreland County’s large property tax increase:
“Westmoreland County should shift all millage off buildings and apply it to land values 100 percent. It should be phased in over time, probably 10-to-14 years.
“The assessments would be cheaper and easier because there would be no need to analyze improvements. A junkyard, parking lot, farm or a factory would be the same evaluation. This would be transparent with each site on the county computer.
“Most importantly, the economy would boom if the county put all taxes on land value. Removal of taxation on businesses and labor could only help productivity.”
On that last reader’s point, Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, responds: “Henry George raises his land-tax mantra: It solves nothing.”
George was the 19th-century American political economist behind “Georgism” – the theory that the economic value of land should belong equally to all. As Wikipedia notes, “George famously argued that a single tax on land values would create a more productive and just society.”
But as David Henderson writes at EconLib.org:
“George was right that other taxes may have stronger disincentives, but economists now recognize that the single land tax is not innocent, either.
“Site values are created, not intrinsic. Why else would land in Tokyo be worth so much more than land in Mississippi? A tax on the value of a site is really a tax on productive potential, which is a result of improvements to land in the area.
“Henry George’s proposed tax on one piece of land is, in effect, based on the improvements made to the neighboring land.
“And what if you are your ‘neighbor’? What if you buy a large expanse of land and raise the value of one portion of it by improving the surrounding land. Then you are taxed based on your improvements. This is not far-fetched.
“It is precisely what the Disney Corporation did in Florida. Disney bought up large amounts of land around the area where it planned to build Disney World, and then made this surrounding land more valuable by building Disney World.
“Had George’s single tax on land been in existence, Disney might never have made the investment. So, contrary to George’s reasoning, even a tax on unimproved land reduces incentives.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org)
