How Bad Is It Living In New York?

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  • New York certainly has its problems, and I write frequently write about many of them. But is it really awful living here?

  • I believe in keeping these things in perspective. New York is actually a pretty great place to live, at least for now. The problem is that we have a class of idiotic politicians (and voters who put them in office) who pursue obviously destructive policies that make things much worse than they could be.

  • However, rather than an imminent collapse, what we face is an ongoing slow relative decline compared to other parts of the country that follow more sensible policies. The problem is not really that things are so bad, but that they could be so much better with so little effort.

  • It is a tremendous missed opportunity. I remain optimistic that things can be turned around, although that could take a long time.

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Dear Mayor Mamdani, Just Wondering, Are You Planning To Pay Your Own Millionaires' Tax?

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Dear Mayor Mamdani, Just Wondering, Are You Planning To Pay Your Own Millionaires' Tax?

  • Our new socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has proposed many destructive initiatives. But if there is one that stands out above all the others as his signature issue, it is his plan to raise income taxes on the “ultra-wealthy,” which he has defined as those people earning $1 million of more per year.

  • The City of New York does not have the authority on its own to raise income tax rates, either at the State or City level, so he has requested that the State Legislature enact his proposed premium taxes on “millionaires.”

  • Here’s what I’m wondering: If the Legislature goes along with Mayor Mamdani’s request, does he plan to pay the new taxes himself?

  • We know the answer to that — of course he doesn’t intend to pay the premium “millionaire” rates. But why not?

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A New Line Of Attack On New York's Rent Regulation Regime

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  • In New York’s large suite of self-destructive public policies, it’s hard to choose which one is the very worst. But an excellent candidate is the regime for regulation of residential rents, mostly going by the name of Rent Stabilization.

  • Because of rent regulation, New York’s rental housing stock is older, more outdated, and less well-maintained than the housing of any other American city. If you got yourself into one of the regulated apartments a few decades ago, you likely enjoy a significant bargain on your monthly rent versus comparable space, to go along with your 30- or 40-year old kitchen and bathroom fixtures and appliances, and insufficient electricity to run a toaster and a hair-dryer at the same time. Try to upgrade to something a little more up-to-date and you will find that your rent will triple, so you are locked in to this one apartment for life. Meanwhile, kids just out of school who have gotten an entry-level job in New York and try to break into the rental market find that they face the highest rental prices in the country. In other words, it’s the progressive vision of perfect justice and fairness for all.

  • Another effect of the regulation regime has been to seriously degrade the value of the buildings and apartments subject to the rules. So you might ask, if the price control regime takes away all or most of the value of a property, doesn’t this at some point become a “taking” under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, giving the property owners the right to seek “just compensation” from the state for the loss of value?

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New York "Climate" Policy Approaching The Cliff

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New York "Climate" Policy Approaching The Cliff

  • For a few years now, it has been blindingly obvious that New York had over-promised and over-committed on impossible “climate” goals that could not be achieved. In various posts I have referred to this as an approaching “cliff,” or perhaps as the “green energy wall.” It has been entertaining to ponder what the final disaster might look like.

  • This week has had a lot of developments. Most interesting is the growing split among the governing Democrats between, on the one hand, those who see disaster coming and are looking for some kind of graceful exit and, on the other hand, those pushing full speed ahead to go over the cliff.

  • It may already be too late for New York to have any graceful exit from its self-inflicted predicament. Nevertheless, my official position is that I am advocating for New York to take the most graceful possible exit while it still can. But I have to admit that secretly I am hoping for the most aggressive advocates to get their way and take New York over the cliff. Hey, I’ll wait out the blackouts somewhere else, and maybe a critical mass of the voters will finally wake up.

  • So let me just give you some straight reporting on the latest developments.

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Mayor Mamdani Declares That New York Has A "Budget Crisis"

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  • One of the first tasks that a new Mayor has in New York City after taking office is to present a budget. Given that an annual New York City budget is well north of $100 billion, you would think that this is a serious undertaking. But our new Mayor is the 34-year-old play-acting college socialist Zohran Mamdani. How does he handle the task?

  • Mamdani kicked the process of with a press conference at City Hall on January 28. Here is a transcript and video of his remarks. Excerpt:

  • I want to speak directly to New Yorkers, who have for too long been misled and misinformed about the true state of our City's finances. I will be blunt: New York City is facing a serious fiscal crisis. There is a massive fiscal deficit in our City's budget to the tune of at least $12 billion. We did not arrive at this place by accident. This crisis has a name and a chief architect. In the words of the Jackson 5, it's as easy as A-B-C. This is the Adams Budget Crisis.

  • Yes, there is a “serious fiscal crisis,” featuring a looming deficit of some $12 billion, all of which is entirely the fault of our prior Mayor (Eric Adams). And what is the underlying cause of this “crisis”?

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New York's Ridiculous Energy Policy Way Off The Edge Of The Cliff

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New York's Ridiculous Energy Policy Way Off The Edge Of The Cliff

  • Every time I write about this subject it has gotten yet a little more ridiculous. The background is that back in 2019 New York, both State and City, set themselves targets for “emissions” reductions and energy transformation that are quite literally impossible as a matter of physics, thermodynamics, and cost.

  • And then, just to show who is the boss here, they made the impossible targets mandatory by statute.

  • In the case of New York State, the statute in question is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA or Climate Act). Among the many requirements of that statute, the most immediate are a mandate for 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030 (known as “70x30”), and another mandate for 100% of electricity from “zero emissions” sources by 2040 (“100x40”). I should also mention that the CLCPA in addition contains a deadline of January 1, 2024, for the State Department of Environmental Conservation to issue regulations informing us peasants how these various impossible mandates of the CLCPA were/are going to be achieved. That latter deadline, you will note, has long passed.

  • So here we are, seven years into the CLCPA morass.

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