The idea is being kicked around in some circles to create incentives to attract high skill immigrants to lower growth areas like the “rust belt”. One of the most common proposals is one to ease the H1B visa quotas to help attract highly educated tech workers into areas in which they are in short supply–such as the rust belt.

Central to the myth of the early industrial age is the idea that it was built on the mass “exploitation” of the poor and unskilled by a small elite of rich people. It’s pretty hard to make that case today, most especially in the old rust belt, which is a region with a both a surplus of low skilled workers and acute shortages of high skill tech workers. It’s pretty common to hear stories of large employers making decisions on where to base huge plants based on the availability of a small number of highly specialized people, many of whom are first generation immigrants. None of the statistical evidence shows that Pittsburgh has a problem retaining its current residents; it does however have a huge problem attracting or retaining new immigrants.

I thought I would post a link to an old post I did about how transit is funded in Hong Kong (the non Communist world). The major transit system is run by a private corporation which is one of the worlds most profitable. The bulk of these profits come from the development of land along its transit lines. “It’s likely for example that a North Shore transit link could have paid for itself by allowing high density mixed use development of the area across from downtown. Instead, we have two government funded toilet bowls, an insolvent transit system and a city on the brink of solvency.”

In the aftermath of the drinks tax passage, a new issue has risen to the front page: the City of Pittsburgh police claim that their fleet is in such disrepair that they are not able to efficiently respond to incidents. Therefore, I propose that the police department buy a bunch of prepaid bus tickets and have their officers respond to low-urgency calls by taking the bus. PAT’s funding woes get solved, the cops get the transportation they need, and you can bet that people will start moving to the back of the bus when a uniformed officer tells them to. Everyone wins!

In seriousness: while several of my blogging colleagues (Mark and James, I’m looking at you) are correct that we can’t tax our way to prosperity, it’s also true that basic civic infrastructure costs money. Mass transit in particular creates positive externalities (better air quality, decreased congestion on streets, increased sense of community, and fewer drunks on the roads) that can’t be captured by transit fares alone. Is a drink tax the right way to pay for it? Maybe not, but at least they’re taxing something that nobody *has* to consume. If I don’t like the tax, I can invite my friends over instead of going out to a bar. If I go out and my drinks are a bit pricier (though *still* way cheaper than Philly, New York, or DC), I can enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that my beer is helping clean up the air.

It ain’t perfect, but money has to come from somewhere, and until we get the political will to stop wasting money on giant tunnels and questionable highways, the drinks tax seems like a relatively good alternative to me.

The Internet has no lack of cuteness, art or Pittsburghiness, but any combination of those three things will immediately get my attention. Jennifer Gooch’s website, One Cold Hand certainly qualifies - it’s a database of single gloves. It’s sort of a mashup of Found and Goodwill, framed in a gentle, observational art project.

But it’s not all about the art - onecoldhand.com also allows the loser to locate the lost (by dropping the site an email), and for users to submit the gloves that they find in their sloshy, soggy Pittsburgh winter travels - just drop the glove in a handy-dandy drop-box at many neighborhood coffee shops (see the site for a list).