via stuartschneiderman:
It’s interesting to watch idiot politicians set out to destroy a city. In fairness, the idiot politicians were elected by idiot voters, so, we must conclude that these voters are getting what they voted for.
Being of less than surpassing intelligence, they vote for the political party that promises to support and care for them. And they discover that the very same political party believes that the best way to do it is through higher taxes on the rich. Since they are not rich they are all for taxing other people. But then when the rich start fleeing the high tax state, the voters who believed that they had voted themselves a living suddenly discover that the goose has stopped laying the golden eggs. So, naturally, they blame Donald Trump.
QED
Anyway, the Zero Hedge blog has offered two recent stories on a slightly arcane issue: taxing stock transactions. You see, in many stock markets around the world, the local government takes a tiny piece of every transaction. Obviously, when you have billions of stock trades, those tiny pieces end up being real money. New York State does not do so because some four decades ago the stock exchange threatened to move out of the city.
Now, with New York’s tax base shrinking and the city and state being in the hands of idiot politicians, the idea is rising from the dead.
Related: New York, London Get Hit Hardest in Mega-Mansion Sales Plunge.
While Covid is mentioned in the brief Bloomberg article, no mention of riots, protests, or other reasons that could be driving the real estate plunge.
(Via Maggie’s Farm, which is loaded with many more links for your reading and blogging pleasure.)
KAROL MARKOWICZ: How To Bring New York City’s Refugees and Middle Class Back Home.
Will people ever return to New York City? Should they?
Walk around Gotham right now, any random day, and you will find an empty, hurting city. Boarded up windows still dot the streets of ghost-town neighborhoods such as SoHo. Greenwich Village is a deserted wasteland of garbage and disarray. Graffiti is rampant. Emotionally disturbed people are prevalent. The homeless problem, which had been growing steadily for the past few years, has now exploded. Crime is up. Way up. Including and especially shootings.
Our politicians are completely absent. Mayor Bill de Blasio is musing on the Marxist canon. Gov. Andrew Cuomo spends his time celebrating himself on late-night television.
In May, The New York Times reported that 5 percent of New Yorkers, or about 420,000 people, had left Gotham. Many more have left in the months since. What does our city offer to induce those people to return?
What, indeed.
h/t Ed