More Fuzzy Math From the Anti-Transit Flat-Earth Society
The real crime against accounting in the anti-transit propaganda is the claim that it costs ... [Austin Powers music] ... $157 billion dollars. You can see ominous looking spreadsheet and listen to the radio ads. Scary, right?
Scary, but completely fraudulent. This sort of accounting would have made Enron's bean counters blush.
First of all, the $157 billion figure is measured in "year of expenditure" dollars, so that a dollar spent now and a dollar spent in 2027 are the same. But because of inflation, a dollar in 2040 is worth way less than a dollar spent today.
You have to adjust spending for inflation, or it becomes meaningless.
Second, the total dollar value includes revenue that goes to Sound Transit 1, which is not on the ballot. De-funding Sound Transit 1 would mean ... no suburban buses. None! I'm not sure how Microsoft and Boeing would feel about that.
Third, the figure includes Sound Transit budget estimates beyond the life of Proposition 1's authorization, and goes on to extend these estimates for another seventeen years. Basically, they're assuming that Sound Transit 3: The Search for Subways will appear immediately after ST2. This is a fabrication out of whole-cloth; we have no way of knowing what the region's addition transit needs may or may not have in thirty years.
When you eliminate these three accounting gimmicks, you get the true total cost of the Roads and Transit package, which is about $17-8 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Finally, they engage in my favorite bit of mendacity ... using per-capita tax rates rather than median household tax rates. Bill Gates and I have an average wealth of about $20 billion, but Bill Gates has all of that wealth.
Once you factor in this gimmick, the annual cost for most households is much closer $500—a small price to pay for a faster commute, or the ability to get by without a car.
