New York City and New York state have been sailing towards correction territory for years. The only thing that was keeping them on life-support was tourism and the financial industry.
NYC can kiss tourism goodbye. NYC is no longer safe, not because of the virus or sinking tax revenues. It is not safe because of decisions made by NYC politicians, put there by NYC residents. They cut $1billion from their police force, handcuffed law enforcement making them impotent – as crime and murder rates soar. Not to mention the riots, arson, and violence. Then of course the bail-reform rounds this perfect mess off nicely, you break the law - violent crimes, non-violent crimes - you go free and in many cases, you are not prosecuted. NYC residents don’t feel safe. Why would tourists?
The financial industry doesn’t need NYC anymore. The stock market crashed and recovered nicely without hardly anyone going to work in NYC office buildings. What does that tell you? It tells me that these highly paid traders, hedge funds and the like don’t need NYC to keep making gobs of money. Some have to leave the state because their companies left NYC. Just watch the stock exchange and financial trading server farms in NJ get moved to Texas or Florida.
NYC and NY state overplayed their hand. Most NYers are paying taxes to pay for NY state government worker pensions. Talk about wealth distribution. Every taxpayer either has to save and invest or work until their dying day to provide themselves with a pension - and in NY simple civil servant secretaries are taking home $4000 a month in pensions.
So, why should the rest of us bail out NYC or NY State?
They argue that they pay more federal taxes. Gee there are more New Yorkers in New York than Wyomingites in Wyoming. Same federal tax rates. The argument that NY companies contribute more federal tax dollars is moot – because NY state shut businesses down and chased way too many out of state while allowing small- and medium-sized businesses to die on the vine, because they will not allow them to open.
Stop whining, open up your city and state and get to work. You want tax revenue - well let people work. You want tourism – give the police the money you reallocated back and provide them with the authorities they need to effectively combat crime. And get rid of the bail reform, which is nothing more than a free-for-all for criminals.
The people who left aren’t coming back, the people who can still afford to leave are on the way out and the people left over are either super wealthy or poor. It took real talent to allow this to happen. And the people who are responsible for this mess live in NY and vote for NY politicians. NY cannot hide behind the virus anymore. The situation NY is in has more to do with poor choices than the pandemic.
If New Yorkers want the rest of us to bail it out – then please present us a plan on how you are going to live according to your means – based on today and not pre-Covid. It may shock NY politicians to know that there are a large majority other states that are doing just that – they are adapting to the new situation. And because most opened up their economies, they are going to leave NY in the dust.
#62: A dead on post. Thank you.
The computer farms moved out of NJ as a primary location some time ago. NJ was an emergency step after 9/11, but most of the important farms went fully distributed and are now multiply redundant in data centers all over the country - with no few of them having presence in Dallas, for example.