Ulmo
join:2005-09-22
San Jose, CA
 ·Comcast
 ·SONIC.NET
| Tax urban places? Stop shifting money. Tax rural places!
Why should urban places that already pay high rates for all sorts of stuff subsidize rural places that already pay low rates for all sorts of stuff? Housing in rural places is dirt cheap compared to urban places. Urban places get something in return for higher housing costs: increased efficiencies of proximity, which directly means lower communications costs. That's the whole reason urban living is more expensive: proximity. That's for communications and commuting.
If USF is used to make rural places have cheaper communications costs, then the USF should be predicated upon an identical UHF* fee against rural homeowners and renters to offset urban housing costs, by directly paying landlords and banks that money on behand of renters and borrowers for housing. For a homeowner in rural areas that paid only $80,000 for their house, they can pay a UHF fee of approximately $1,000 per month, which would go to the pockets of renters (and homeowners) in the big cities.
Then, I'd gladly pay for part of their more expensive communications costs, which ought to be more expensive because they aren't paying for proximity.
* UHF=Universal Housing Fee |
