No descriptions, just numbers.
Monthly Archives: October 2010
As you may have seen in my previous post, driving to work certainly affords me some interesting opportunities to see hilarious and contradictory things. Today was no different. I was stuck behind an Alexandria City vehicle that had a “Buy Alexandria” sticker on it. The premise, of course, is to encourage Alexandrians to patronize business located in Alexandria instead of shopping around in other municipalities for the best price.
The Mayor started a webpage to encourage this practice. Part of it reads:
The City of Alexandria faces a challenging economic environment similar to the unprecedented fiscal decline impacting the entire country. To thrive during these difficult times, you can help the local economy by buying in Alexandria, because your dollars count. Buying where you live and work is also good for the environment. You can reduce your carbon footprint by using mass transit, driving shorter distances, and walking to make your purchases in Alexandria. Everyone can help in many ways by keeping their dollars in Alexandria.
“As we navigate an uncertain financial future, it is critical to support our local businesses and government with our business,” said Alexandria, Virginia Mayor William D. Euille. “Buying in Alexandria and spending our dollars here will strengthen our economy, and help sustain the excellent services Alexandrians are accustomed to receiving. Remember: when you spend here, everyone benefits.”
When you spend here, everyone benefits? Sorry Mayor Euille, that’s not true. Like I’ve discussed, this is a fallacy and a bad practice for consumers to engage in. His premise, similar to that of the “buy local” (don’t buy from chain stores) is that you should spend in Alexandria, not outside of it. While slightly better than “buy from local stores not chain stores,” it, too, is flawed. According to Mayor Euille, everyone, of course, will benefit. Wrong.
Let’s say I am tasked with buying some potatoes for a party I am having. I could go to Giant on Duke Street in Alexandria, or I could go to Shoppers on North Kingshighway in Fairfax County. I bought a 5lb bag of potatoes there for $.99 recently. Giant is currently advertising a 10lb bag of potatoes for $3.49. 10 pounds from Shoppers? $2. So, by choosing to buy in Alexandria over Fairfax, I’m actually poorer, and not better off.
Back to the topic at hand.
So, where did Alexandria buy this vehicle? Richmond. Yes, Richmond. Alexandria City is encouraging its denizens to shop locally on a car they bought from a dealer hours away in Richmond. Hypocrisy. Blatant hypocrisy.
Now, I expect that Alexandria put out a bid, and Capital Chevrolet GMC had the lowest bid. Which is exactly what I’d expect my former city of residence to do — find the lowest cost for the best product or service. I think this is great. Buy from them by all means. Continue to require competitive bidding! However, don’t tell me, as a consumer, that I should do anything different. Consumers, too, should patronize businesses that offer the products they’re willing to buy at the lowest possible cost — not because of where they are located.
Maybe if the city didn’t abuse its power to force the closure of businesses I frequently patronized, like The Trophy Room, I might patronize Alexandria businesses more. But, because they do things like this, I’m no more likely to shop in Alexandria than I am in Annandale. In fact, I am less likely to shop in Alexandria because of it. While this is hypocrisy, I do not think Alexandria should practice what it preaches, nor should it be preaching “Buy Alexandria.”
Alexandria should put its focus on changing laws and regulations to make it more business friendly, rather than cling to an archaic notion of buying local. Then, Alexandria might see some real growth.
Answer me this, if I were a business owner, what would interest me more: (1) My city putting bumper stickers on cars encouraging residents and local citizens to buy from businesses located in Alexandria? Or, (2) a competitive city business climate — sensible regulations that aren’t onerous and costly and lower taxes?
My guess is most people would prefer the latter. Decreasing meter rates, as you are doing, is a good start to attracting more people to Alexandria.
Two old political adages are: “bumper stickers and yard signs don’t vote,” and that “people vote with their wallets.” Meaning, don’t waste your time on a buy local campaign. Help make Alexandria businesses as competitive as they can be with a better business climate, and people will come, Bill (Euille).
They’ll come to Alexandria for reasons they can’t even fathom — good prices. They’ll turn down King Street not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive in Alexandria as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won’t mind if you look around, you’ll say. It’s only $1.25 an hour to park. They’ll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have, affordable parking they lack and good prices on products & services they seek. And they’ll walk out to the docks in Old Town; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They’ll find they have reserved benches somewhere along one of the piers, where they sat when they were children and watched ships pass by. And they’ll patronize Old Town like they used to, and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come, Bill. The one constant through all the years, Bill, has been prices. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But prices have marked the time. This town, this city: it’s a part of our past, Bill. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Bill. People will most definitely come.
(Can you tell I watched “Field of Dreams” recently?)
So today I went and visited the new Wal-Mart at 6303 Richmond Highway, Alexandria, VA 22306. I have been excited about this for some time, since the other nearest Wal-Marts are way the hell down Route 1 and at Kingstowne.
This Wal-Mart has a grocery, but as a result, has less space to stock other things. Overall, it is smaller than an average Wal-Mart, but uses its space fairly well.
Like any good trip to Wal-Mart, I bought something I didn’t necessarily need — a $5 football for work when we do evacuation drills. My last one deflated and won’t reinflate. I also bought 4 lightbulbs for 88 cents, a new plastic liner for my shower, Great Value frozen mini hamburgers (don’t worry White Castle, they sell your stuff too, and cheaper than Giant), a pound of ground beef (73/27) for $1.98, their knock-off Velveeta for $1.50, vegetable oil, milk, coors 12 pack, and a bottle of wine for $2.97.
Without further adieu, here are my pictures. Enjoy.
One of my friends recently shared her opposition to the Proposition A in Missouri.
Vote NO on Proposition A – Losing the city earnings tax would mean eliminating 1/3 of the city’s budget with absoultely no suggestions of where to make that money up… in addition, it would take away our right to ever inact a city earnings tax in missouri again! One millionaire should not be single-handedly deciding public policy, especially BAD public policy!
http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/the-platform/article_e8732bbc-bacf-11df-87a3-0017a4a78c22.html?sms_ss=facebook
I responded, somewhat satirically:
Yes, vote no! Keep the suburbs prosperous!
In response, a friend of hers made two posits:
In San Francisco it cost $5 to cross the Golden Gate bridge into the city. That’s about $1,200 a year. So if you make less than $120K, you’d be better off paying the 1% earnings tax.
…
St. George makes most of its money writing traffic tickets. You don’t want STL to resort to that, do you?
So, below is my response:
Tony, I wasn’t sure if your comments were directed at me or somebody else.
First, I think that comparing St. Louis City to San Francisco and St. George is like comparing an apple (STL) to a grape (St. George) and a watermelon (San Francisco).
St. Louis is roughly 66 square miles with about 356k in population. St. George has about 1,200 residents and is .2 square miles while San Fran is 231 square miles with about 815k people. You can understand my concern about applying two fundamentally bad policies for drastically different municipal governments to St. Louis.
Nonetheless, I think that just as a $5 bridge crossing tax and a ticket frenzied police department is bad policy, so is a 1% earnings tax. Now, by two accounts, the 1% tax in STL and KC account for 33% and 44% of each city’s respective budget.
Now, Mayor Slay’s COS claims that 70% of the tax is paid for by people who work in St. Louis, but don’t live there. Kansas City estimates that figure at 40%, but also admit it’s likely higher.
Sports figures aside (visiting sports players have to pay St. Louis taxes), it doesn’t make sense to me that non-residents consume an equal amount of services provided by St. Louis city when compared to St. Louis residents. It is asinine to tax them as if they live in St. Louis, in addition to the taxes they pay as a resident of another municipality they choose to live in. Regions that don’t impose overlapping taxes tend to be more prosperous than regions that do not.
With regard to your Golden Gate Bridge question, the correct answer would be: “I’d be better off paying neither a 1% tax to a city I don’t live in and/or not paying $5 a day to drive there.” Taxing non-residents’ income is not a smart policy for growing a city, much less a region, in my opinion. Both policies discourage businesses to locate there, and people from working there.
A policy like this has two effects that immediately come to mind.
One effect provides a disincentive to live outside of St. Louis City, which obviously makes sense. But why should a government policy try and force people to relocate? Is that what they want — more people in St. Louis? Higher consumption of government services? Sure, people will pay more in sales and other special use taxes, but a higher population in St. Louis city will lead to higher demand for land and housing, and because St. Louis isn’t acquiring new land, that means that prices for living in St. Louis will rise. And with that, they’ll only be paying the 1% they paid when they lived elsewhere, but with higher bottom-line costs of city living. Restricting where it makes sense for a potential employee to live inhibits the ability of businesses to attract labor to a city or region.
Naturally, people will determine which living area best fits their needs — and government policy like this doesn’t always lead people to think “maybe I should live in St. Louis instead of Clayton.” The other effect is that it might cause people and business owners to seek work and source their businesses elsewhere. And relocate they have. Since about 1990, Missouri’s population has grown by about 800,000, but St. Louis County’s population has decreased by 4,000 and the City of St. Louis has lost about 40,000 people.
I wonder why? Now, I’ll be careful to note that correlation isn’t always causation, but I wonder why cities/regions with income taxes tend to fare poorly when compared to cities that do not have them. (Think Texas.)
I have lived most of my life in cities that have them. Cleveland and St. Louis, sadly, are on the decline. Both have city income taxes. Washington, D.C., where I work, wants to impose a “commuter tax” on non-residents who work in the city – which is ironic, in part, because D.C. gets the highest per-capita amount of federal tax dollars in the country.
Now, imagine how I would react if federal law were changed, and D.C. imposed a commuter tax on me, a resident of Virginia. Let’s say I make 100,000, and D.C. wants to impose a tax of 2% on my income, in effect, making me $2,000 a year poorer. Now, I am a bad example because the federal government isn’t leaving anytime soon, so I am held captive to such a tax if I want to stay in my current job — but not necessarily 100% captive. I can seek alternate employment, and historically, people are more transient over their working careers. This archaic city tax on income ignores this reality.
Let’s say that BNA, a trade publication, offers me $99,500 starting salary at their office in Virginia because they like my analysis of current events. Translated: I just got offered a raise of $1,500 because I no longer would have to pay D.C. taxes. I would be quite likely to take that job.
On a side note, D.C. doesn’t tax “commuters” because they cannot under federal law. But, they levy a lot of tickets. I’ve paid nearly $1,000 in parking tickets since I moved here in 2007, only having received one parking ticket in 25 previous years. I received it in St. Louis. (Speeding tickets now are another matter.) I would find it hard to believe that the city of D.C. would lift a finger on issuing parking and speeding tickets if they were able to levy an income tax on non-residents.
Let’s consider the decisions of the business owner to locate or grow their business. Say that, space restrictions aside, I am given the choice of locating my newly-formed technology business in one of three jurisdictions, Maryland, D.C., or Virginia. Now, imagine those jurisdictions are Illinois (Maryland), D.C. (St. Louis City), or Virginia (every Missouri jurisdiction adjacent to St. Louis City).
If I pick St. Louis City, 100% of my work force will pay that 1% tax, and that decision could limit where they choose to live.
If a guy wants to live on a farm south of Arnold and commute in, he pays the tax, but if he doesn’t want to pay that tax, he may not come and work for me. While others might determine it’s in their best interest to live in St. Louis, but may choose not to do so for financial, safety, or other reasons.
If I chose to put my business in Maryland Heights, some people might think they want to live in the Central West End, but why would they? Who would, if given the choice, choose to pay higher taxes when there are comparable alternatives that don’t levy a 1% tax (in effect, substitute goods?)
Bottom line is: municipal income taxes are bad for attracting talented workers, and are bad for business. They’re bad for the region. What would be better, St. Louis City and St. Louis County growing together, or both of them shrinking? If you answered the former, you’d be right. But, the latter occurs for a variety of reasons, one of which is the city’s income tax.
Similarly, it’s troubling that St. Louis and Kansas City are not functioning correctly, since they rely on between 40 and 70 percent of their city income tax revenues from non-residents for what amounts to between 1/3 and ½ of their total budgets.
My conclusion is that Kansas City and Saint Louis are living beyond their means at the expense of an inefficient tax that harms them economically. And if they’re not living beyond their means, the fact remains that they’re not effectively taxing their citizens or provide services inefficiently (free zoos come to mind.) What’s worse, they’re not using those tax dollars to make their municipalities an attractive place to live and start/grow a business. Saint Louis City and County are shrinking, not growing. Population is down, unemployment is up. Is it any wonder?
In closing, why didn’t Anhueser Busch InBev jump at the opportunity to locate their global headquarters in St. Louis? Didn’t the city lose jobs after the merger? The income tax might be one reason, but it’s not the only one.
In the end, 1% really does matter. Believe it or not.
FURTHER READING:
Missourian: Proposition A raises questions about earnings tax
KMOV: Debating Proposition A… you know… the earnings tax one
KansasCity.com: Questions about Propostition A and the earnings tax
Tax Foundation: County and City Income Taxes Clustered in States with Poor TaxClimates
Yesterday, one of my friends from college died. Patrick Wessel, above, will be missed by the world.
Patrick and I weren’t the best of friends, but he knew me and I him. Like me, he was eclectic, but Patrick was just pure unadulterated awesome. Anyone who met or knew him would agree. While I made enemies, Patrick made friends. I can’t recall anyone ever saying anything bad about Patrick.
Patrick moved to New York City, and last year, he contacted me to inquire about cool places in D.C., which I felt was an honor, because Patrick is the guy who tells you about the place off the beaten path’s beaten path. And when you got there, Patrick knew the bartender, his wife, and the bouncer. Patrick mastered the art of living. My suggestions probably weren’t used, because I don’t go out in D.C. that much, but he followed up (see below).
Which is why it is so unfortunate that God took him. I searched back on the correspondence we had via email and facebook, and I thought the best message to share was last year, a follow up after his visit to D.C. The last line really hit hard, as he will never be able to move to D.C.
Subject: pres. scholars
if you’re interviewing one “Katie/Katherine Williams,” that’s my 17 year old triplet cousin from chicago. she’s awesome. white girl dresses like a straight up latina gangsta. we make fun of her all the time, it’s hilarious (though i doubt she will dress like that for the interview…). she’s really smart but might be a little shy at the interviews…then again, maybe not. she’s ridiculously creative and clever.
had a great time in dc when i went in january. lauren ended up coming up with the date places…went to bar pilar one night, then breadsoda another night, and finally the national air and space museum (udvar-hazy center). ’twas awesome. i’m applying to navy officer candidate school right now, so i hope to be living in that general vicinity over the next +-20 years!
wordup,
pw!
If you went to SLU and knew Patrick at all, search your email archives, your facebook message archives. Odds are, Patrick said something that now you’ll never forget, because I’m betting that he made a difference in your life.
Just in time for election season! The first batch of Bomble Brewing Company’s beer will be ready in time for elections.
Our Scottish Ale is full of caramel malts, both in the extract and specialty grains. Chocolate malt, roasted barley and a touch of smoked malt bring this fullbodied, malty ale to completion.
BEER DETAILS, COURTESY OF BREWER’S BEST INGREDIENT COMPANY (our supplier of ingredients).
IBU’s: 15 – 18
ABV%: 3.25% – 3.5%
OG: 1.034 – 1.038
Color: Amber Brown
Yield: 5 Gallons
