Ive been in NYC 18 years (half my life now) and I truly believe it’s the greatest place on earth for me.
It is however becoming harder to defend. The tax rates are out of control high, the quality of life is getting lower (subway infrastructure is disgusting; homeless out of control), apartment maintenance fees are ridiculous and it’s more dangerous than ever (while I lived here). Add to that the “you’re not paying you’re fair share attitude” which I’m definitely getting... there are days I feel like I should move our company to Florida or Texas. I can’t see myself living in a city that isn’t happy to have me.
> it’s more dangerous than ever (while I lived here)
I agree that QoL in NYC is awful, but it's not "more dangerous than ever". Like in every other US city, the crime rate is near an all-time low[1]. Murders spiked during Covid, but they're still low compared to previous decades.
> Add to that the “you’re not paying you’re fair share attitude” which I’m definitely getting
Where do you get this attitude? I have never experienced that in the city.
In fact, it's one of the places where the rich seem to be the least scrutinized, because most of them pay lip service to liberal values while still being 100,000x richer than a middle-class person living a few neighborhoods away.
I'd be interested to see the crime stats from the last year to today - from the sentiment I've seen on social media it appears violence has been increasing since the Jul 2 your source article was posted. Add to that they slashed the police budget on Jul 1[1] I think the OP may have a valid point.
10 months of increases does not negate two decades of decreases. And that's even assuming there is an increase, since "the sentiment on social media" may very well be incorrect as is the comment purporting a more dangerous NYC.
Re crime, the parenthetical in my OP was my sloppy attempt to clarify it’s the most dangerous it’s been while I have lived here (18 years).
Re where I get the attitude, our mayor and local representatives (like AOC) have both said this. There’ve been numerous marches down 6th Ave and the West Side Highway as well.
> it’s the most dangerous it’s been while I have lived here (18 years)
It's not, though. Do you have any data to back it up?
All cause mortality has been very steady (with the exception of Sept 11 and Covid)[1]. Murders are near an all-time low[2] and are at nearly half of what they were when you moved to NYC.
Felonies are lower, muggings are lower, everything is lower. So what does "dangerous" mean to you and where can we see something to back up the idea that the entire city is more dangerous?
Like in every other US city, the crime rate is near an all-time low[1]. Murders spiked during Covid, but they're still low compared to previous decades.
Those statistics focus on murder and 'major' crimes, and it's great that they are down. However as a city dweller the crimes that I actually worry about and the thing that makes a city feel "dangerous" are 'minor' crimes like pick pockets, muggings, vandalism and 'minor' assaults.
> the crimes that I actually worry about and the thing that makes a city feel "dangerous" are 'minor' crimes like pick pockets, muggings, vandalism and 'minor' assaults
Those are also down[1] in NYC, as they are across the country. If you can find any statistics that show otherwise, please share the link.
The stats are useless. The police need them to go down, so they go down. My partner and a friend came on a woman who was getting mugged and the guy ran off with her bag. They called 911 and the cops showed up, didn't get out of the car, blew cigarette smoke in their faces, and said, "You don't want to report this, do you?" My partner had to walk her home since they just drove away. If you do insist on reporting, they make you pay for it, you could be at the station for 5 hours, which happened to my mother after her car was broken into by a homeless man. They're encouraged to not report specific kinds of crimes.
> The stats are useless. The police need them to go down, so they go down.
How do you know there is more manipulation of the stats now than there was at any other point in the past?
If you're saying the official stats can't be trusted, you're just saying that no one knows how bad crime is. Or maybe you're saying no one knows except you?
Regardless, you can't argue that crime is going up based on anecdotes, regardless of whether the official stats are trustworthy or not.
> If you do insist on reporting, they make you pay for it, you could be at the station for 5 hours, which happened to my mother after her car was broken into by a homeless man. They're encouraged to not report specific kinds of crimes.
So you're saying that's true in every city in the US? There's no city that's trying to do honest crime reporting?
I'm not saying crime is going up. I'm saying the stats are useless. It could be going down, and they're still useless.
Yes, I am talking about NYC. I'm sure every other city is a relative statistical utopia. But I have no information on those cities, given I don't live there, except for the official stats.
They could be shaving off exactly 10% every year, and the trend lines are fine. Or they could shave off enough to make crime go down slightly every year, which is what I'd do if I were a chief who had to answer to a mayor, and didn't really care about statistical fidelity.
Just because you're looking at a chart, doesn't mean the chart reflects reality. And it doesn't matter if you don't have a nice other chart to look at. Sometimes you can't answer questions accurately from your chair 500 miles away.
> I'm not saying crime is going up. I'm saying the stats are useless.
Then why did you add an anecdote about crimes you heard about?
> Or they could shave off enough to make crime go down slightly every year, which is what I'd do if I were a chief who had to answer to a mayor, and didn't really care about statistical fidelity.
It seems implausible that thousands of chiefs and mayors are doing exactly this, all across the country. You would also expect to see downward jumps when new mayors came into office, which anyone fudging the numbers would do to make sure they stayed in office.
You're talking about, essentially, a conspiracy that runs from the bottom of local police departments all the way to the FBI (who also collect these stats).
The FBI largely collects the stats they are sent. I've made no claims about the rest of the country.
The story of this instance of crime is that they're not collecting data the way they should. The way they opted not to collect it shows that it's part of their standard MO. They could be making up crimes they're not solving, but there's no incentive for them to do that. And it's impossible to see that in action, it would just look like someone entering things into a spreadsheet.
You should respond to claims people are making, instead of responding to claims you want people to have made because they're easier to argue against. It makes discussion a waste of time.
Fox News and their siblings (NY Post, WSJ mainly editorial, etc) have been running with the NYC is over narrative for quite a while. Especially the 'more dangerous than ever' trope. And they always talk about moving to TX and FL where the large cities have a homicide rate 2 to 4x what NYC's is.
I honestly think the main culprit is local news. They're essentially non-journalists, so they basically cover violent crimes as sensationally as possible.
I have relatives in red states who ask me how I can live somewhere as dangerous as NYC. Meanwhile, they're living in a metro area with triple the homicide rate of NYC.
As someone who is “tech salary rich” (so, “rich” without quotes to most New Yorkers) but not “VC rich”, I don’t really relate to this comment. The MTA’s decline is largely caused by it weirdly being run by the state rather than the city, and constant bickering between Cuomo and de Blasio (which has caused lots of other problems, too). Homelessness is an issue, but high income people also very aggressively resist sheltering people in their neighborhoods [1]. And while murders rose last year (as they did in most US cities) crime in NYC has been steadily falling for decades.
> high income people also very aggressively resist sheltering people in their neighborhoods
perhaps b/c they think it would make the problem worse, not better - there is a trend whereby places with better facilities for homeless will attract more homeless (ala San-fran). NY has as such payed homeless to relocate elsewhere. The fact that the MTA is so poorly maintained is perhaps evidence that shelters are likely to be poorly run too?
I might be more swayed by that hypothesis were the NIMBYs not referring to the homeless as "trash", "scum", "thugs", hanging nooses and advocating violent assault. Here are some actual quotes [1] from people organizing against sheltering homeless people in their neighborhoods:
> I think at this point if anyone sees anyone doing this behavior the person witnessing it should run up to them while they're squatting and start kicking them as hard as they possibly can. Maybe if people start being super aggressive and act very violently these vagrants will stop, or at least realize they may get attacked. And I don't mean just kick, I mean kick with bad intentions and they [sic] intent to injure. Kick them in front of a bus if possible.
> Forget pepper spray or mace. Use Hornet Spray and shoot at the eyes. Will give you time to run away.
If someone is hanging a noose that's an objectively racist act and the fact that the victim happens to be homeless is probably not the biggest thing the person has a problem with.
Sure, but I think you have to look at it intersectionally. The fact that they called them "thugs" and used a noose doesn't mean that they're only motivated by racism. Their hostility might manifest differently if the homeless people were mostly white, but it wouldn't go away.
Weird. Never really heard of anyone calling homeless people thugs.
I don't even associate homelessness with black. I associate it with crazy white dudes shitting everywhere - but maybe that's because I'm on the west coast where it seems the majority of homeless guys getting attention are white. I guess there's also the fact that if you were black, homeless, and crazy - you'd have been killed by the police already. Black and homeless - probably keeping lower profile as to avoid police killing you.
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Quite frankly, I don't trust this reporting, especially since it reports someone "flashing a white power finger gesture" which was clearly the "OK" gesture. The "noose" is also ambiguous - a loop of rope on scaffolding - but I can't tell if it tightens when pulled or not.
If you want to show that those attitudes are anomalous, you're going to have to bring something other than standard CYA disclaimer boilerplate. That NY Post link seems like a non sequitur.
I don't think it's a stretch to describe the "OK" sign as a "white power finger gesture" when the person making it is wearing a Trump visor and shouting "white lives matter". And I don't see how the noose is ambiguous, either — what do you think a noose is if not a loop of rope hung from somewhere?
No I don't, the burden of evidence is on you. The opinion of one guy in a group of 14k is only that one guys opinion by default. The link demonstrates the guy is outspoken. I can easily find racist comments on HN - it doesn't prove anything about other posters.
> what do you think a noose is if not a loop of rope hung from somewhere?
I think it's a rope knotted in a specific way to tighten when pulled. Being "the shape of a noose" is irrelevant unless it bears this quality. I have loops of string/rope all over the place, none of them are nooses.
This story has been told a thousand times. It was an annual tradition for Bear Sterns to threaten to leave the city over taxes. They went out of business before they could do it.
If you've been here 18 years, crime is still way below what it was when you arrived. We're at about the level we were 10 years ago. Not great but not the worst we've seen. I've been here since the 90s and it was pretty bonkers then but people flooded in anyway.
Also I'm hoping this tax rise is a prelude to statewide single-payer healthcare which is also on the legislative agenda. You can move your business to Florida or Texas and you'll be sending your tax dollars to Covid-deniers and insurrectionists.
The last paragraph of this comment reminds me of the New Yorker cover, "View of the World from 9th Avenue." Just add a judicious "insurrectionists" label on the far side of "New Jersey".
Hey, I resemble that remark!. But seriously I'm specifically thinking of the state governments of Florida and Texas as being two of the worst. Both in terms of poor government and their impact on the nation as a whole. I don't think it's an unreasonable point of view either when you see the reactions of even Fortune 500 companies to the nonsense in Georgia.
You know that the homicide rate in all the large cities in both Florida and Texas is double, triple, or quadruple what it is in NYC, right? Similar with property crime (except Tampa and El Paso).
I think wealthy people have an easier time avoiding crime in these places, since you just drive around everywhere. In NYC you have billionaires sharing the street with homeless people, which, honestly, is probably better for society, or at least seems more human.
that quotes "refusing to pay tax like ordinary citizens" - yet the tax they are not paying is explicitly not one that ordinary citizens pay in the first place.
The truth is some places behave like anyone with money obtained that money only with assistance from their place of residence, when a lot of the time the assistance was minimal. When people relocate, this proves that point, but it's a shame it has to be that way.
It does not prove a point. Assume there's a startup hotspot due to e.g. a famous university, which costs a lot of money to run. Then a few startup founders move away because they feel like they are paying more taxes than it's fair (but I doubt it's about fairness, it's about the inconvenience to move), then it's not proving any point. They might not need the ongoing assistance, but the enabling factor was still there (and maybe the initial assistance).
I think those tax statistics about the few rich residents contributing a great share says more about inequality than unfairly high taxes.
So what costs a lot of money to run? The university, or the hotspot?
b/c it seems the startup special sauce are the founders, not the cafe they meet up in. And other than a meeting place, how else do they benefit from the university, without the university having some stake? Even if they are students, they pay for the privilege.
> maybe the initial assistance
initial assistance in the form of a loan? Or something more subjective?
> the enabling factor
The local water company also enabled those founders to meet, but I don't expect their compensation to go further than the cost of the water bill. What kind of skin-ion-the-game do you expect the local government to have? Also, if a bunch of founders foster a startup culture ultimately benefits the area, are they owed compensation, or is culture free for the state?
> says more about inequality than unfairly high taxes
Unless you inspect the reason why that inequality exists, it says nothing beyond raw speculation.
(I am arguing from the perspective of a student at a university)
> So what costs a lot of money to run? The university, or the hotspot?
The startup scene around a university is directly influenced by it. It created the environment the founders were meeting in. They were not moving there for the coffee place but for the university, which put a lot of resources into the founders.
> Even if they are students, they pay for the privilege.
I don't believe that anywhere in the western world the university education is fully covered by the fees.
> initial assistance in the form of a loan?
yes, in form of a loan or other financial assistance, legal advice, mentorship etc. Every startup I know uses some small form of initial, external funding (including bootstrapping ones). It may be only enough to pay for the cost of living of the founder and cofounder for a year, but the small initial assistance is important. It is often a public program coordinated by the startup-program at the university. I include the financial support you get if you're a student focusing on your startup.
> The local water company also enabled those founders to meet
A lot of infrastructure you use if massively subsidised and is not covered by the cost (it might not be affordable by many).
> Unless you inspect the reason why that inequality exists, it says nothing beyond raw speculation.
I don't think so, because you can criticise inequality itself without inspecting the reason. Can society be fair with such a massive inequality? This is a valid argument.
I think a problem is that a lot of successful people when evaluating their life attribute all their success to their personal abilities. I think this is a massive problem and not recognised enough. I see every people as an interaction between their character and their environment. The environment forms the character and the character influences the environment. You are not an isolated agent just interacting with the world, born some way and destined to success. For example, many poor people are working hard with multiple jobs to finance their living, hard work itself is not an excuse to explain away success.
Also I was arguing that if the enabling factor is the important part then moving away does not prove anything, which is still my point.
Tangential, but it's fascinating to me how different people's preferences can be. Every time I'm in NYC I feel like I'm going to go crazy if I stay more than a couple of days because of how dense and artificial it is (concrete, metal, etc). I hope people flock back to cities if the pandemic ever ends so that countryside prices can go down and I can find a place to be away from humans and around trees and animals
> Add to that the “you’re not paying you’re fair share attitude” which I’m definitely getting... there are days I feel like I should move our company to Florida or Texas. I can’t see myself living in a city that isn’t happy to have me.
Hidden within this comment (in my reading) is the implicit assumption that you are paying your fair share. How exactly are you calculating this?
There are some good arguments to lower taxes on certain people, even some high-earning ones. Reasonable people can disagree about optimal tax rates, and at the end of the day there's nothing wrong with just wanting to keep more of your money.
Even had you made any of the myriad good arguments (which you didn't), going the idiotic "confiscationist" route destroys any shred of credibility or objectivity you may have potentially had. You simply cannot be taken seriously when you're using such ideological flame bait to describe your positions, or more accurately, your misunderstanding of your opponents' positions.
I assume the intellectual basis for this is the "you didn't build that" philosophy. It's a garbage philosophy. Would that I should find paying my taxes was such a voluntary transaction as eating a burger!
It does not justify charging businesses a blanket amount regardless of whether they use those services, and bundle in a bunch of unrelated spending and priorities, and calling that their "fair share." If the problem was really that people who build businesses were taking advantage of public services, the answer would be to charge them for the services rendered (and when possible, give them the opportunity to obtain them elsewhere). Yeah, there's a few public goods (in the strict economic sense) that this doesn't work for, like national security the like, but if you're just talking fire protection and tractor-trailer access to roads and the like, assessments for these are eminently straightforward.
There are much better ways to justify the existence of taxes on businesses.
Grass is always greener, man. My wife is from New York and every now and then I try to convince her we should move back there. Concern about finding a job is always her worry, but I think she vastly underestimates herself.
I've been in Texas over a decade now and presently live in Dallas. The homelessness problem is just as bad. Train infrastructure is probably worse consider there are only five lines in the entire city, and the interiors often have puke and shit all over the seats. Combine above ground power lines with constant high winds and we get power outages probably once a week, at least once a month. The city never fixes sidewalks or potholes. A quarter inch of rain results in half the traffic lights going out. I live within spitting distance of AT&T world headquarters and still can't broadband service from anyone but Spectrum, which is terrible (they once shut down my service and terminated my account because someone else gave them the wrong address and claimed to be moving into my house). Code inspectors literally sleep on the job and shoddy contractors and builders are all over the place, so you need to be extremely careful shopping for a place to live and you can expect to be making some extremely expensive repairs and upgrades within a few years of moving in, somewhat negating the advantage of lower purchase price.
It's a bit of a cultural wasteland, too, which many people won't care about, but if you're from New York, you're probably going to miss it. Dallas is thankfully pretty good for live music if you're into 70s through 90s era punk/metal/industrial type stuff, which thankfully I am, but if you're more artsy, well, the city tried to build an arts district after losing out on Boeing headquarters 20 years ago supposedly because executives wives didn't want to live in a city with no culture, but I can't say it worked out well.
Space is the saving grace. The one thing I still love about this city compared to New York is I've got a downtown townhouse five times the interior floor area as my sister-in-law in Queens at about a quarter the price of her place. But again, we've also sunk a ton of money into fixing nonsense poor craftsmanship that would have never gotten past a city that does real building inspection. My neighbor successfully sued the city for his furnace being installed upside down because the inspector was 84 and he was somehow able to prove the guy was unwilling to walk up the stairs to actually look at what he was signing off on.
I'm not trying to say it's terrible here or anything or that New York is paradise (which I wouldn't know anyway since I've only visited and never lived there). Just beware. Low taxes aren't the end all be all of life. The government still manages to be terrible in a lot of other ways besides, largely with horrible infrastructure and no maintenance, but also in smaller ways like selling your information when you register to vote or get a driver's license, making it effectively impossible to not be slammed with nonstop spam no matter how careful you otherwise are about privacy hygiene.
>NY should rescind the Stock Transfer tax rebates. They are losing out on ~$16 billion in tax revenue annually.
I wasn't the one that downvoted your comment but as fyi...
Increasing taxes doesn't automatically mean government gets increased revenue because the economic actors affected can _change_ their behaviors to circumvent that tax. So NYC probably would not get $16 billion in extra revenue.
E.g. An excerpt from an article[1] about that real life game theory playing out:
>In recent weeks, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ have both discussed moving their data processing centers out of New Jersey in response to reports that New Jersey may impose a stock transfer tax. Technology has made processing trades away from New York’s physical trading floors simple, and the tax may provide incentive to shift stock transfers from one exchange to another. Nations such as Sweden and Germany experienced business relocation and diminished trading levels after enacting a stock transfer tax, subsequently leading them to repeal their taxes.
EDIT reply to : >They didn't have the political power to outright abolish it. What should happen now is that rebate should be removed.
Yes, you had already mentioned that proposal in your first message but your next message really didn't explain why stock owners and exchanges would simply pay the extra tax instead of changing their behavior to avoid the tax*.
The STT was first imposed in 1909. They started rebating it at 100% in the 80s. They didn't have the political power to outright abolish it. What should happen now is that rebate should be removed.
The STT is a 0.5% sales tax on the value of stock trades, 0.1% on debt and 0.005% on derivatives.
This argument (real life game theory) seems to be like:
"I'm taking this (goods, property, residence in a place) and I'm going to give you this (payment, lease, rent, tax) for it"
"Okay. As the owner, the price of (goods, property, residence in a place) is this."
"That's nice of you to think that but I'm not going to pay it. I'm giving you what I said I was going to. Maybe you should be nice, or I'll take the thing and give you even LESS for it"
I think in some contexts that's called extortion, not 'game theory'. Seems like the bottom line is the question of whether the owner of a thing has any property rights over the thing through owning it. If in practical terms they are obligated to sell at whatever terms the buyer demands, they're not much of a property owner.
I have tried, but I am not able to meaningfully relate the situations described in this comment to taxes on the operation of a stock exchange. Who owns the property? Who is buying and selling it? Is the property the stock exchange? Is the state the owner of something and individuals are buying it? Is the state the buyer?
Are the goods in this example NYSE's processing of data? Are you saying that, for example, the NYSE/NASDAQ should not be able to move data processing out of NJ in the event NJ implement a stock transfer tax?
On the contrary, when powerless helpless and broke people intend nefarious things, that is not especially worrying. They are powerless, helpless and broke, and they can't do much to hurt you.
Pretty much by definition the rich are exceptionally powerful and capable. To assume they never intend anything nefarious is a really weird assumption, and they are categorically capable of doing more about ANYTHING they might intend, for good or ill.
If they intend ill, by definition that makes them a formidable enemy that must be taken seriously.
You'll just create a self fulfilling prophecy with that mindset. Why would the rich be prosocial if they're treated as antisocial regardless. They might as well behave nefariously and reap those rewards if people are going to treat them as an increased liability.
Which is exactly what they did, and is how we ended up here.
Yes the game is afoot. Everyone is hedging. I’ve lived in the city for 12 years now and even in that short time I’ve watched it change. The value of these company’s stonks have sky rocketed and that translates in to people on the ground and buildings in the air, in my city as well as others. We know what Amazon did to the Seattle real-estate markets and the culture. Well they (FAANG) did it to NYC too. There were other biggggg problems before but this feels like people are upset, maybe as you point out at the wrong target.
A ridiculous amount of the apartments go unoccupied because they are someone’s pietaterre or just an investment asset. That to me is insulting and am a little bitter that they benefit, cause rent prices to sky rocket and yet don’t even live here and barely visit.
I have watched the culture; food, art and music scene die here as the rich buy convert and transform everything in to their playground; Hudson Yard, and Avenue of the worlds school where tuition for kindergarten is $60,000. The restaurants are worse yet more pretentious and more expensive than ever. Many business store fronts go unoccupied, because the asking price is too high yet the landlords never drop the rent, because they don’t have to. The building is an investment asset. So premium storefront goes unused and papered over for years and in some cases, decades.
The rich maybe aren’t the problem but they seem to be causing a lot of problems...
Edit: to be clear, I live in one of the neighborhoods that is actively being “gentrified” after it was already gentrified in the 90s so I have a front row view to all this development.
> Why would the rich be prosocial if they're treated as antisocial regardless. They might as well behave nefariously and reap those rewards if people are going to treat them as an increased liability.
Because you should do the right thing, even if no one is watching. Even if there's no reward - or even if you lose a reward! That's the basic demand of being a moral human being, so I think it's pretty easy to say "the rich" should be prosocial regardless of how they're regarded.
They won't be seen as anti-social regardless. If they were no longer rich then they would be very differently. Beyond a certain point being rich is itself antisocial die to the societal cost of wealth disparity.
This. The problem is actually the fault of the poor who don’t see how wonderful the rich are. If the plebs were more fulsome with their praise, the pennies would rain down upon them from in high.
"the rich" are not a single entity, nor are "the poor" - there's a wide spectrum of individuals that would do well to be treated as such in each category.
One of the problems is that the law doesn't treat them as individuals. Not really. The rich can afford expensive lawyers while the poor are often forced to plead guilty or settle to avoid bankrupting their family. Arguably, this means that among the rich you see a higher proportion of people who have broken the law and were able to "get out of it".
Some would argue that "the rich" are antisocial by definition due to the way accrual of money is often premised on minimizing "labor costs". But even setting that aside, there's plenty of antisocial behavior among the rich and prominent - ranging from Epstein's child sex trafficking to Bezos' union busting. It's not like this view of the rich is wholly fabricated.
In the Epstein case, specifically, it's also important to note how many other rich people associated with him. You may call that unfair guilt by association, but it's certainly not good optics.
I think GP's point was that if black men/the rich are expected to do bad things, that will make it more likely. There are plenty of reasons that could be true, for either group. For example, if you have already decided I'm a bad person, I lose nothing by living up to that.
Black men living in the inner city stand to lose everything up to and including their life by "living up to that" and will garner almost no sympathy for doing so, even from close relatives.
Certainly some do live up to their stereotype out of spite and end up paying the ultimate price for doing so.
A rich person, is, almost by definition, shielded from the consequences of their actions so they can afford to act out of sheer spite toward the rest of society and get away with it.
If they are inherently nefarious (which I did NOT say) to the point where the only way they'll behave socially is if they're bribed to do so, then they ARE an increased liability.
I don't think that's proven. It may well be that the rich are no different from anybody else (in this case, wealth tax seems the moral choice as the people are no better or worse and you're just taxing the money pile, which is not deserved through increased merit IF the rich are no different)
It may be (theoretically) that the rich are inherently better, smarter, wiser and more moral people than everybody else. This seems testable. Assuming it without evidence seems not a good idea.
If they ain't better, they absolutely are an increased liability. This would imply that people can in some way gain from bad behavior, or otherwise increase their wealth through antisocial means.
I think the possibility of that being true is already proven. We just don't know if it's true for every single rich person.
With what little reasons there are to actually remain in New York due to the pandemic, the last thing New York should be doing right now is raising taxes. Didn't they learn their lesson from the Silicon Valley exodus?
The article itself mentions just how easy it is to pack up for Miami, and a few percentages more of already sky-high taxes will just push people to leave, especially with the federal government already hell-bent on raising taxes on their end as well. And how will this tax be implemented? Will it be a wealth tax? Or will it be a tax that effectively taxes working class doctors, engineers, and lawyers instead? Given their resources and access to powerful accountants and tax attorneys, taxing the wealthy is near-impossible.
Oh, they want to tax businesses, too? Don't they realize how much businesses are hurting there right now?
And how will this money be spent? Will MTA ever join the current century? Or will this tax money just fund peoples' pensions instead like in CA? Raising taxes is an especially tough sell when nobody is convinced their tax money is being spent in ways that benefit them or the public at large.
>Didn't they learn their lesson from the Silicon Valley exodus?
The people spamming the "raise taxes" button have seen the seeds of their ideology spread far and wide with the "silicon valley exodus". In light of that, why would they stop?
You wanna tell people they're what's wrong with the world fine but don't be surprised when they don't wanna give you their resources, distance themselves from you and support your enemies. I do not feel bad at all for the people who are lamenting this. They should have picked up a history book.
Which history book? Many history books would tell us that high levels of income and wealth inequality lead to social unrest (French Revolution, for instance).
In my view, taxation comes down to a judgment of "fairness" and this is very hard to agree upon. Given the rise of COVID, it's even harder to fairly allocate the more limited revenues in big cities now.
Funny you mention the french revolution. I think it's a great point of comparison because the precursor situation has so much in common with NYC's current situation.
The french didn't revolt because the rich were rich or because the rich weren't kicking in. They revolted because (warning, massive generalization) the government was taking a lot of money from everyone and squandering it (paying back debts for boondoggles, to the benefit of many wealthy people) despite times being very tough for many. While few are literally starving in NYC the parallel, particularly the government taking in tons of revenue yet failing to deliver better conditions for its people, is definitely a strong one.
It looks to me like people were pissed because regional parliaments (nobility) were bleeding a turnip with the poor while not bothering to kick in. Saying it was squandered money when literally the first two sentences say "state income was not being done properly" is puzzling.
New York had better not turn on the wealthy, because we rely on the taxes they pay for so much of our city budget. A distressingly small number of people make up a distressingly large percentage of revenues.
Interesting quote from the article: "The top 0.05 per cent of earners — just 1,786 filers — accounted for 16 per cent of its income tax revenues in 2018"
No one is taxing wealth, though. They are taxing income. Please be aware of the fact these are different, that such wealth can be accumulated despite steep income taxes, and that even if such taxes are desirable NYC is not necessarily the jurisdiction which (a) is able to collect those funds, or (b) deserves to have them.
Social engineering schemes at the city level have meaningful constraints.
Does this not accurately reflect the real distribution of wealth, or in fact reflect it regressively (i.e. that distressingly small number of people are paying proportionately less than other citizens, they are just that astronomically wealthy)?
Something tells me that many people won't pay those 16 billion and will move to a different place instead. NYSE isn't the only stocks market in the USA.
"Good riddance," you say, waving goodbye to all the Wall Street based jobs that pay Wall Street income tax to support universal pre-K in the Bronx. "We don't need their kind around here anyway ruining society" you say, as the MTA makes overnight service cuts permanent for lack of funding.
also, just to add. The Stock Transfer Tax started in 1909. They were paying until the 80s when the state started rebating it at 100%. Its is a 0.5% sales tax on the value of stock trades, 0.1% on debt and 0.005% on derivatives. The NYSE was doing fine when everyone was paying it.
But that is the crux of the issue. Wealth is political power. The only way to mitigate wealth's influence on political institutions requires drastic, systemic changes. The wealthy can be as well meaning as they want, but no individual should control that many resources in a democratic society.
I don't think it's possible to prevent wealth from having political influence. Wealth is economic power by definition. The only way to significantly reduce the impact of wealth on democracy is to reduce the amount of wealth that wealthy people have.
Absolute. Wealth is power. Power is not having to worry about your safety and security. When you have so much money that you’re not answerable to anyone, you don’t worry about paying the bills or the mortgage, you can really speak your mind and spend your money in ways that others simply cannot. That is true power, imo.
> When you have so much money that you’re not answerable to anyone, you don’t worry about paying the bills or the mortgage, you can really speak your mind and spend your money in ways that others simply cannot
Indeed. And when you have so much money that you can offer that same freedom to others (or smaller but still significant improvements to their lives) then you inevitably gain influence over them (on average, if not always in specific cases).
You make a good point, allow me to comment on both sides. I would love to be rich, absolutely filthy rich. However every time I buy a lottery ticket, I start daydreaming of what it’s like to be rich, and how much good I can do in the world. I wonder if I feel that way is because I grew up in a very lower income Midwest family. Is it an appreciation of money, how it was gained, or something deeper that turns rich people so cold to those who are not? Not at all rich people are bad, I think there are a lot of great rich people who do a lot of great things, but the richest of them are not as altruistic as they would like us to believe. It’s the ulterior motives I guess that really bothers me when the rich give.
1. Your buying of lottery tickets is the strongest-possible signal suggesting that you will never be rich, sorry.
Source: the research of Thomas J. Stanley.
2. That climate change hasn't been adequately solved is proof-positive the rich aren't doing their part, or are possibly actively-accelerating environmental, ecological, and civilization extinction and collapse. It's morally-indistinguishable from them coming into every home, waving a gun around, and bragging about how their going to kill this child or the next one. What do you do when someone threatens to kill YOUR descendants? Let them, beg them not to, or shoot them first?
3. All philanthropy should be done in secret or it casts an image of attempting to buy favor.
Oh, no, you mistake me. I make enough money now that when I see the lottery get to half a billion dollars, I can afford without worry, a ticket that’s now an investment.
Red baiting what you don't understand. Communism has never been implemented anywhere, ever. Stalinism, Maoism, Marxist–Leninist Minh, but never communism. Cuba got close, but it still wasn't communism.
Irony: you talk about fairness without offering an alternative, system, or a path to get there. Do you think billionaires will just roll-over and hand over their money and power out of kindness? Should we just petition them and offer stern objections? What would that accomplish?
Look at how Islam Zakat laws, and disallows people from exploiting others. At the same time, it is not communistic nor capitalistic. It's a third pole basically.
There is certainly an entrenchment of an American and global oligarchy. What oligarchs historically fear the most is growing resentment among the masses, whether justified or not (i.e., disliking rampant exploitative practices like usury vs. your run-of-the-mill envy). When that happens, distraction, _unwarranted_ suspicion, and confusion are excellent tools. Distraction and _baseless_ suspicion can refocus resentment by whipping up conflicts among the masses themselves. This has the secondary benefit of dividing the masses and rendering them harmless. Confusion about basic facts and weakening the level-headed exercise of reason can render people blind, inert, and ineffectual, often producing self-absorption. There are lot of ways to do this. Pornography ("sexual liberation as political control"), fear mongering, racial conflict, prurient and stupefying film, sensationalist news. Even COVID, which is very much a real virus, became an instrument of political control (the senseless prolonging of undiscriminating lockdowns and social distancing limits social contact and communication). Censorship is another symptom because if you censor discussion that says too much, again, a dangerous consensus might result that will destabilize the status quo that those in power rely on.
But such tactics don't last. Either the society in question self-destructs because such a state of affairs is never sustainable, or people realize what's being done anyway. This is a dangerous situation to be in. Those in power rarely wish to change, and the mob can itself impose the most terrifying tyranny.
All this would explain the emerging interest in socialism. Ties between private interests and government are extremely fuzzy, with revolving doors between industries like Big Tech and Washington. Growing resentment among the masses poses a threat. Socialism would seem to both secure oligarchic power by completing the merger of corporate interest and government while also pacifying the resentment of the mob with state-funded services and UBI or whatever else. Not all oligarchs agree on the precise means, which is where power struggles can come into play, but the general trajectory is thus.
>There was once a sense of collegiality among business and labour leaders fighting to rescue the city, he laments. “None of that exists now.”
How is this anything other than the fault of the rich no longer “fighting to rescue the city”? They appear to just be victim blaming and complaining because there is pushback on wealth flowing upwards for decades.
Moving to low tax hellholes won’t make their lives better, it’ll just keep driving the wedge of wealth inequality down further and make the rich have to install water filters and generators. It would be great news to New Yorkers since decreased demand from the rich would start making the city livable. If the rich aren’t giving to the local economy, they are only taking.
Low tax places are not "hellholes" despite your insults. They might have slightly less services, but in return you pay a lot less for them. The trade off is easy to make, particularly if most of the missing services are ones you don't personally use much.
In my opinion, you can't ask them for more. If they are able to move to Florida and still run their business, then the value of their business is not derived from NY but rather from external sources. In this case, these are people bringing wealth from outside to the city.
The problem, probably, is mismanagement of the raised revenue. If it is too much money, there will be lots of predators. Sometimes you have to burn everything to realize what you had and start from the ground. People (rich or poor) clearly like NYC more than Miami but it seems with the current governance, the city has to reset itself every once in a while.
Tax revenue has outpaced median wages by a long shot. I'm not sure I can relate to the argument that increased taxes is what is needed to close the wage gap as the tax collector's have done nothing to prove they will do any better than the rich at distributing wealth.
You're not responding to the GP's argument. They're saying that tax revenue has increased faster than median income, and this hasn't addressed income inequality at all. Why would taking more even faster do anything different?
"If we need more tax revenue" isn't a foregone conclusion. It might be the answer but there's at least some evidence to the contrary.
> It would be great news to New Yorkers since decreased demand from the rich would start making the city livable
What kind of demands from the rich do the think affect "livability"? To give two examples - homelessness and the poor state of the MTA - how will fewer rich people help there?
Why do we have to make anyone into the enemy? I legitimately do not hate any American leaders, even the leaders of the opposing party who do the most to prevent "my" policies. They are human beings too, and we'd all be better off without hatred.
Here in utah we have water shortages and major droughts.
Politicians like the governor plead with us to "watch our water" while not doing anything about industrial use of water.
Now for statistics... All private use of water in the state amounts to under 3% total. Meaning: If everybody in the state took one shower per year it'd do diddly for the water shortages/droughts.
Because industry is still using the bulk by a shit-ton.
It's all posturing to make us "feel good" that we're "helping" but it doesn't do anything. My yearly household amount of water is something like 0.016% of state use..or maybe it's 0.0016... I read the statistic somewhere else, but it's not even worth doing anything because it won't move the needle one iota.
I personally have an abhorrence towards all politicians, at least the ones who take money from special interests and corporations (so 95% of politicians).
Taxes are already too high in NYC. A single adult in NYC with a $100k salary has an effective overall tax rate of 31.5%, and 9% of that is city and state.
Trying to raise the rates higher is insane. We have a spending problem, not an income problem.
Not to mention that the timing of this is just absurd. Everything that makes NYC great has been closed for a year. The next mayor wants people to pay more, but won’t commit to reopening the city? Why would the “rich” stay? Why would anyone stay? For the trash, and piss?
In Germany, you'd be paying 42%. You'd get subways, a national rail system, universal healthcare, and college would be free. America doesn't have a "spending" problem, it has a history of mal-investment and neglect. But those F-35s. And nukes! Enough to wipe out most of humanity.
Proceeds to list things that we spend and invest unnecessarily on.
We have a subway system in NYC. Run by the MTA. A bloated and incompetent organization that needs a billion dollars to extend a subway line a single mile, and will routinely spend hundreds of millions of dollars on unnecessary bridge painting and other shenanigans.
There’s a reason we don’t have nice things, and it’s not because our taxes are too low.
London's 2 mile northern line extension costs about $1.7b, so doesnt sound out of whack. Berlin did extend the U5 about 1.4 miles for $600m but it's the right order of magnitude.
I don't know which city would be most comparable to New York, but Germany recently announced 120+ a billion dollar investment in upgrading rail infrastructure nationwide[1].
The high-speed rail connnection between Berlin and Munich cost 10 billion Euro. Even then, it was criticized for being over budget. It travels at 200km/h+ and is over 600km long. I think that project is completely infeasible in the US, at any price. It seems like a bargain to me.
Of course, high-speed long-haul lines are a different thing than subways. I lived in Munich for several years and I can say firsthand, subways are magical. As an American, it's embarrassing we cannot dig holes. It's not because money.
Person from Germany here. The 42% is the top rate so that on 100 k$ the effective rate would be less than that. Healthcare costs come on top of that.
Free college is included.
45% is the top rate. 42% kicks in 57k income. 45% at 274k. You're right that the effective rate might be less for $100k, but not much. The curve is quite steep.
Based on that chart, the effective tax rate is not near 42%. It actually appears to be closer to 31-35%, which is almost exactly what the $100k person in NYC would pay.
I think the issue that most non-US citizens fail to realize or comprehend is that most people in America don't pay any tax at all. The labor participation rate is 61.5% and then half of the people that do work still don't pay any effective taxes due to all the credits and deductions. A minority of earners support the entire tax base.
...and then, of course, we frivolously waste the revenue we do generate.
I am a US citizen, and I've lived abroad. Americans are being fleeced, and the entire mindset is that infrastructure is a cost, rather than an investment. It's crazy that we spend so much on "defense". The words of Eisenhower's parting address were not heeded.
But, regardless. If I were in charge I would fire the entire management of Amtrak and all Metro rails and just put the Germans, Swiss or Japanese in charge of it.
Who pays vat? Less than 10% of my monthly outgoings are on VATTable things, and most of that expenditure is because I bought a new car rather than a second hand one.
$100k is £72k, in the UK you'd be paying 30% (£22k). 36% if you're still paying off your student loan (which would be about 6 years to repay the fees and another 7 to repay the cost of living loans)
> But those F-35s. And nukes! Enough to wipe out most of humanity.
Doesn't these F-35 and nukes give the US trade advantage and wealth transfers (aka free money from unstable countries) and thus make it possible for Americans to be that rich?
It turned out that camping out in a public square is not an effective method of forcing change, since it is possible to just ignore you. Then after the hype died down and as people got sick of the more negative aspects the movement bled to death and the actual "occupation" was eventually cleared by the police.
1. 1% Michael Bloomberg billionaire decided it wasn't convenient anymore and sent in the cops to beat heads to clear them out.
2. Vague movements rarely are organized enough to have clear goals, a clear plan to get there, and sustain interest, attention, and involvement to achieve them. You don't ask billionaires for a donation because they'll never give more than a dollar. And you don't camp-out at their offices because they control the cops, the government, and it looks weak. Once the physical presences of OM were lost, the community, social, and political bonds were severed because the people weren't serious and committed to seeing real change through; instead, they treated it like a Wall St. Woodstock.
If citizens were serious about recouping loot stolen from working people, there are only two things billionaires understand: money and survival. If a movement can't effectively threaten either of those, then they are irrelevant. This dynamic of under-regulated capitalism is the fault of the billionaires, and how their grotesque greed snatched defeat from the jaws of obscene success and just handed it over to likely rapid upheaval and an unproven, alternative system.
I couldn't access the article from the link because it is paywalled.
Same with the search result from archive.org
But when I google "The rich shouldn’t feel like the enemy’: Is New York turning on the wealthy?" and click through from the google search result I get the full article.
I'm getting some kind of paywall. It's all relative but in general if you're hoarding wealth beyond anything you could possibly ever make use of while the people around you want for necessities, you are behaving as an opponent and should not feign surprise at the treatment. Also until we are past capitalism, no, society is not turning on the wealthy (they're still wealthy)
How does someone become a billionaire? They typically have to have a good idea + other people helping them. Then beyond that them and their team have to do something people like. Apple is worth 2 trillion right now. They didn't get there by robbing anyone. They produced a product/service that people wanted. They produced a value without forcing anyone to do anything.
That creates an imbalance. Society now owes them in kind. I did something for you and now you do something for me.
That's where the 'enemy' part comes in. The rich are owed a value in return but people don't want them to get that value back. They want to increase taxes and take the rich people's money away. In effect they want the rich to produce a product/service and get little to nothing in return.
The problem is that you can never ever adjust for that. The original product/service is priced with taxation accounted for. NY increases taxes to take the money from the rich but in turn only makes the products more expensive. The rich then just get that much more rich because they still take 20% profit margin.
Typically billionaires become billionaires by gambling other peoples money and winning
"Most fortunes were made in the staid finance and investments industry...Notable finance and investing list members include Warren Buffett, the third richest person in the world and Robert Smith, the founder of private equity firm Vista Equity Partners...It turns out managing or investing other people’s money can make you rich"
It is however becoming harder to defend. The tax rates are out of control high, the quality of life is getting lower (subway infrastructure is disgusting; homeless out of control), apartment maintenance fees are ridiculous and it’s more dangerous than ever (while I lived here). Add to that the “you’re not paying you’re fair share attitude” which I’m definitely getting... there are days I feel like I should move our company to Florida or Texas. I can’t see myself living in a city that isn’t happy to have me.