[HN Gopher] Fleeing New Yorkers resulted in an estimated $34B in...
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Fleeing New Yorkers resulted in an estimated $34B in lost income
Author : theBashShell
Score : 70 points
Date : 2020-12-15 22:02 UTC (58 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| Merman_Mike wrote:
| I permanently left NYC this year.
|
| The combination of high taxes, corruption, and incompetence
| really wear on you after a while.
|
| I'm all for high taxes in service of a strong social safety net
| and a well-run, modern city. I am happy to pay them. But I can't
| help but feel that my taxes were being outright stolen and
| squandered in this city.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's an interesting point of view Don't you think it's
| exactly the high taxes that give space for corruption and
| incompetence?
|
| Once you accumulate a large pool of money (especially if it's
| someone else money), the larger the pool, the easier it is to
| waste it.
|
| We see it with governments, big tech companies, VC funded
| startups, even when pooling money for a road trip with friends.
|
| I think the enemy is human nature and centralisation, not
| specific malicious individuals
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Everything gives room for corruption and incompetence. The
| problem is the US has some of the most incompetent government
| on a local level in the developed world. Part of it is
| American individualism, part of it is the Republican party
| starving the beast, part of it is the government as a giant
| jobs program.
|
| There is no reason we cannot have competent civil servants,
| long term planning, clean cities, etc.
|
| I'm completely serious when I say we should just outsource
| everything on the county level and lower to the Swiss or
| Dutch.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| The "lost income" is more than 485000 USD per person?
|
| _About 3.57 million people left New York City this year between
| Jan. 1 and Dec. 7 ... Some 3.5 million people earning lower
| average incomes moved into the city during that same period, the
| report showed.
|
| [...]
|
| In Tribeca, a wealthy neighborhood in downtown Manhattan,
| residents who left this year earned an average income of about
| $140,000, Walle said. The typical person moving into the
| neighborhood earned an average $82,000, he said._
| blackrock wrote:
| How will SpaceX's Starlink increase the trend to work-from-home
| or do remote work?
|
| If you can develop software, or write your blog, from a remote
| island, at the edge of a (dormant) volcano (aka: extreme
| remoters), then why not? Or from any rural farmland area of the
| country.
|
| Just video call into your daily Zoom Standup Meeting.
|
| How's the latency of it?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Louis Rossman said it in many of his recent videos.... new york
| has everything, but also costs alot. You have cinemas, broadway,
| restaurants, everything.... and you pay for that privilige.
|
| Now, when all that is closed, you have only the "bad" parts (the
| homeless, crime, noise, bad smells... all that with a "premium
| price")... so, why stay?
|
| Poor people have no jobs, have to move out.... rich people don't
| have anything to do there, and move out because they can.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| NYC is costly, but not as costly as people think. The lifestyle
| is also different.
|
| 1. Most of my life in NY (pre children), we had no car, no car
| insurance, no parking, and rare taxis (and before our current
| mayor, subways worked very, very well, I rarely considered
| taxis.)
|
| 2. Property taxes are comparatively low to other states
|
| 3. Access to culture is widespread and cheaper than people
| think -- there are subsidized tickets for students, etc.
| Museums are plentiful and often free. Libraries are literally
| everywhere.
|
| 4. Access to jobs is great and you dont crush your soul with
| hour-long drives. And when you lose/change your job, your next
| job is also often in the city center, so you dont have to move
| homes.
|
| I live in DC suburbs now and we have one car. It is hard
| getting places w/o a car and the train system is good but does
| not cover as much of the metro as one wishes, and there are
| last mile issues. Property taxes are way, way higher both both
| homes and other property (e.g., $800/yr on my Kia minivan), but
| there isnt a city income tax.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Not that I disagree much, apart from one thing - that places
| like NY have 'everything'. If you like nature, mountains,
| adrenaline sports, weekend adventures without crazy commute,
| then NY has none.
|
| Irrelevant to some, but folks like me couldn't be bothered to
| even consider it even if my take home salary went 10x.
| pen2l wrote:
| Not knocking on you here, just really genuinely confused why
| you'd cite Louis Rossman of all people on earth for his
| thoughts on places to live. But maybe I'm not in on something
| here?
| stefan_ wrote:
| But you don't pay for these things. You pay for a class of
| ancient benefactors of one huge ponzi scheme.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Even worse for San Francisco. Basically just "restaurants" and
| an easy getaway to outdoors. And worse on all the other fronts
| as well (crime, homeless, cost of living, etc).
|
| How well a city takes care of these issues in the good times
| and has rational/sensible policies sets it up for how it will
| do in bad times.
| siquick wrote:
| > Even worse for San Francisco. Basically just "restaurants"
| and an easy getaway to outdoors.
|
| This wasn't my experience in San Francisco when I visited in
| 2016 - I saw some of the best live music in small bars I've
| ever heard, went to a couple of awesome free outdoor events,
| record shopping was quality, just walking around an area like
| Mission I came across a lot of interesting cafes, shops,
| bars, street art, and people.
|
| I was visiting from Melbourne, Australia - supposed live
| music capital of the world, ranked worlds most liveable city,
| and it has a lot of the above - and San Francisco felt pretty
| exciting with a lot to do.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Another case of lower income groups responding strongly to
| financial incentives and higher income groups responding to
| quality of life incentives. Lower income renters see a discount
| to be had, higher income renters see an opportunity to get higher
| quality housing with more space.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I've been seeing more of these types of stories with a line like
| this:
|
| > About 3.57 million people left New York City this year between
| Jan. 1 and Dec. 7, according to Unacast, which analyzed
| anonymized cell phone location data.
|
| Sorry, but I don't really trust the "anonymized" very much. Why
| should some company I've never heard of have access to my cell
| phone location data in the first place.
| spoonjim wrote:
| > Sorry, but I don't really trust the "anonymized" very much.
| Why should some company I've never heard of have access to my
| cell phone location data in the first place.
|
| Not sure how the second follows from the first. There _is_ a
| company you 've never heard of which access to your cell phone
| location data. In fact, hundreds, and they buy and sell them in
| commodity marketplaces just like corn or pork bellies. They
| sell the data with your name attached for one price, and as
| anonymized aggregates for a much lower price.
|
| Unacast is just saying that they bought the cheaper anonymized
| version for the purpose of this analysis. Whether the data are
| real or not is another matter altogether.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Sorry, but I don 't really trust the "anonymized" very much.
| Why should some company I've never heard of have access to my
| cell phone location data in the first place._
|
| If you don't have location services turned off on your phone,
| chances are they have access to it because you gave it to them
| (via an app), or gave it to someone who gave it to them.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the study refers to the location of the
| repeater which talks to your phone, so most likely no
| permission needed
| db48x wrote:
| Your cell phone company sells it to whoever wants it.
| sneak wrote:
| They're supposed to have stopped, but I'm not sure I believe
| it.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/fcc-fines-wireless-companies-
| sel...
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| The fact that you don't like it, does not mean that there are
| not people with access to IMEI numbers. Actually, it would be
| weird if there wasn't since it could be useful for research
| like this.
|
| So why do you not trust it? You're only explaining how you
| disagree.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| It is anonymized in the sense that they can't write your name
| into a search feature and find your location history.
|
| However, they could likely ask to buy the all data for "57
| years old males born in february with a history of calling to
| Alaska every 5 days" and single you out.
| Shacklz wrote:
| I heard a talk once from some guy working for a company who
| analyzes this data (it had something to do with
| transportation of people; where it would be most efficient to
| have a new bus route and such), some of the regulations are
| actually rather interesting (Europe). E.g., location-specific
| data is not allowed to be sold if the amount of data points
| is below a given threshold, to avoid de-anonymization
| scenarios such as the one you have mentioned. Granted, I have
| no idea how well the regulations actually work, but it did
| sound as if quite a bit of thought went into it.
|
| Thinking about this, I wonder if companies providing
| smartphone apps with invasive tracking are upheld to the same
| standards...
| sna1l wrote:
| https://www.wired.com/2013/03/anonymous-phone-location-data/
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks, this is exactly what I was thinking about, glad
| someone did an actual study.
| economusty wrote:
| Remember which political party runs the city.
| j2bax wrote:
| While we are at it, lets remember which political party runs
| the areas that are most dependent on the government.
|
| Source: https://wallethub.com/edu/most-independent-
| states/36426#main...
| trident1000 wrote:
| Does this take into account federal loans and grants for
| infrastructure spending which is higher in urban areas?
| Probably not. Does it take into account that many left
| leaning states like NJ have completely bankrupt pension
| systems that will need to be rescued at the federal level?
| Probably not. Also looks like NY scores 38th on gov
| dependency out of 50 which isnt exactly great. And going back
| to national highway system assistance, Cali has got to be #1
| in receiving federal funds.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Looks like lots of places that grow the food you eat.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| That doesn't control for who benefits from the money spent.
| For example, Alaska is billed for the early warning and radar
| systems to detect Russian ICBMs, but Alaskans don't really
| benefit from it because Russia would never bomb Alaska, and
| most of the jobs go to people shipped in from the lower 48
| states, not Alaskans.
|
| Likewise, Nebraskan farmers look like they're on the dole
| with the corn subsidies, but the other 49 states benefit from
| lower and stable corn prices, so it isn't clear why Nebraska
| would get all the costs accounted to them when everyone
| benefits from it.
| smt88 wrote:
| "[Other place] is better than New York during a pandemic
| lockdown" is not a ringing endorsement of [other place].
|
| It will be interesting to see what happens to NYC's population
| after the pandemic. I suspect most of the change will have been
| temporary.
|
| Also, many people fleeing northern cities and California are
| ending up in Southern cities, which are (spoiler alert) run by
| the same party.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Precisely - if cities with overwhelmingly progressive
| constituencies can't get their own house in order - what's the
| chance that a country be different?
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| /me looks at the USA
|
| I don't think the overwhelmingly... regressive? conservative
| government you've been running has done overly well either.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| The federal government is conservative?
|
| Best measure of the size of government is budget, and
| conservatism values small government. There is nothing
| conservative about a staggering rise in the spending of
| federal government.
|
| Neither are any of the procedural changes to congress, lack
| of deliberation or expansion of the powers of the executive
| branch.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Remember what the difference between causation and correlation
| is.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Correlation != Causation does not apply when the system is
| under the control of single entity. So many of these
| governments have been run by the same party for decades on
| end. If these long-term rulers didn't cause the bad outcomes
| from the time of their reign that only means they were
| completely ineffective. Why should ineffective government be
| kept around?
|
| It is plain stupid to not hold elected leaders responsible
| for actual outcomes produced under their watch.
| sqrt17 wrote:
| How about: US citizens saved $34B by not having to stay in the
| highest COL areas?
|
| Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers?
| ABCLAW wrote:
| >Why should we sympathize with a minority of rent-seekers?
|
| I don't really think this is about sympathizing with rent-
| seekers.
|
| Cities invest in infrastructure to cover anticipated service
| delivery well before it's due, and the financing for doing so
| is a multi-decade affair. Before you complain, this includes
| things like providing running water, roads that are paved, etc.
| Really core essential pieces of making a city work.
|
| If your tax base moves to suburbs or just plain leaves the
| city, the city is still on the hook for those payments, so it
| results in dramatically cut services or increased taxes on
| residents.
|
| The flight of some of the tax base incentivizes the flight of
| many, resulting in further cuts to maintenance contracts,
| preventative work, and the general crumbling of infrastructure.
| Sometimes this can be gracefully managed by planned downsizing
| and renegotiating deals with vendors and financiers. In other
| cases, this doesn't occur and the city simply... dies. While
| the US is very young and doesn't have many large examples of
| this, Flint and Detroit come to mind.
| melling wrote:
| 70,000 in a city of 8 million.
|
| It's less than 1% of the population.
|
| The infrastructure needs don't change much.
|
| How much of the tax burden did those people support?
| CalRobert wrote:
| "While the US is very young "....
|
| What's that? By what measure? It's one of the oldest
| continuous governments out there.
| neckardt wrote:
| The government may be one of the older ones, but many
| cities are far, far older. Many cities in Europe have been
| around for thousands of years.
| pc86 wrote:
| With the same tax structures they have now?
|
| Big shifts in governance tend to reset things like
| municipal bonds and the like.
| bluedino wrote:
| >> While the US is very young and doesn't have many large
| examples of this, Flint and Detroit come to mind.
|
| You mean "most of the rust belt"
| [deleted]
| gnicholas wrote:
| The article was ambiguous about what the $34B was a measure of
| (income of the departing residents or the tax income generated
| by the income of the departing residents).
|
| But the underlying paper makes it clear that it's the former.
| So it's not accurate to say "US citizens saved $34B...". That
| was their aggregate income, which is still subject to the same
| federal taxes no matter where in the US they moved. They would
| have saved on state and local taxes, depending on the rates of
| their new home jurisdictions.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The average New Yorker has a mere one-third of the carbon
| emissions as the average American. This is really bad for the
| climate overall. Dense city living is very efficient; living in
| the suburbs and driving everywhere is not. NYC is the densest
| city we have.
| pc86 wrote:
| I'm not sure there are enough NYers for this to noticeably
| impact the carbon emissions of the eastern seaboard, let
| alone the world as a whole.
| threatofrain wrote:
| We don't have to sympathize with rent-seekers necessarily, but
| I would wonder if the rest of the city can move as adaptively
| to wherever opportunity beckons, and whether NY can downscale
| their city services accordingly.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It serves as a cautionary tale when your budget isn't as
| agile as those who make up the tax base.
| iratewizard wrote:
| In a lot of ways, city infrastructure investment is a ponzi
| scheme with one layer of abstraction.
| Exmoor wrote:
| The most eye-raising part of this data to me is that 3.5 million
| people apparently decided 2020 was the perfect year to move to
| New York. Even if I thought NYC was the place I wanted to live
| more than anywhere else, I would still heavily consider delaying
| that move in light of the current health and economic situation.
| The information on who those people are would be interesting to
| me.
| ruddct wrote:
| > About 3.57 million people left New York City this year between
| Jan. 1 and Dec. 7, according to Unacast, which analyzed
| anonymized cell phone location data. Some 3.5 million people
| earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that
| same period, the report showed.
|
| Uhhh I'd take this with a HEAVY grain of salt, given that it's
| based off of anonymized cell phone location data. Were this true,
| 40% of NYC's population has turned over in the past year, which
| feels like absolute nonsense from anecdotal experience.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's absolute nonsense from my anecdotal experience here in NYC
| as well. I don't even see how it's remotely possible for a full
| 40% of NYC's population to have turned over in the span of 9
| months. New lease signings are _down_ , not up many hundreds of
| percentage points! Every single thing that would have to be
| true for this to be true as well, isn't. It's bad methodology
| from one company trying to get its name in the news and then a
| media outlet running an uncritical article using this as fact.
|
| We just had an election. Go look at the voter rolls and who
| actually voted, and for the absentee ballots, where the
| absentee ballots were sent. There's no way in hell 40% of the
| voter rolls have turned over since the last time we held an
| election. The data is out there to easily disprove this
| ridiculous notion.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| > Go look at the voter rolls
|
| I used to do this, and can report the area of London that I
| lived in turned over 25% of its (voting) residents in a 12
| month period: that is, in normal times!
|
| Non-voters are likely to turn over even quicker than that.
| john_moscow wrote:
| I think, this highlights a bigger problem. You can very roughly
| split people's mindsets into 2 groups:
|
| * Long-termers. They don't mind delayed gratification. They like
| planning and saving for the future. Most have complex multi-year
| degrees or have business experience. They are generally happy
| with life and want to teach their ways to their kids. What they
| want from the political environment is a clear set of rules (e.g.
| taxes, laws backed by a truly independent court system) with
| minimum interference in their lives.
|
| * Short-termers. They prefer instant gratification. They gather
| credit card debts on impulsive purchases. They live here and now
| don't want the headache of long-term planning. They are usually
| less happy with life and expect politicians to appeal to their
| emotions. Recognize them through identity gestures, say great
| words, show attention.
|
| Long-termers tend to earn more, except something in our society
| changed, and they are quickly becoming a dying breed. So many new
| social policies, especially in high-density areas, are targeting
| short-termers and blaming long-termers for inequity. Quite
| predictably, they are leaving these areas, driving the median
| income lower.
|
| But, what's even more alarming, the same trend is happening all
| over the West - the middle class of happy independent thinkers
| satisfied with life, is vanishing, replaced by unhappy low-
| earners driven by divisive tribal instincts.
| russh wrote:
| That's a pretty slow start, Hopefully it will ramp up quickly.
| webkike wrote:
| Why hopefully?
| Firebrand wrote:
| 3.57 million people left New York City this year to live out
| their lives in comfort someplace else, and then 3.5 million
| people hungry for opportunity arrived to take their place. I hope
| to see similar results in San Francisco.
| DeonPenny wrote:
| Theres not an infinite amount of rich and successful people 1%
| of NYC population pays 50% of taxes. These people aren't
| replaceable.
| yurielt wrote:
| Rich people are repleaceable not in the short term but they
| are very much repleaceable specially rent seekers and those
| whose earnings come only from owning which describes most of
| the non financial and some of the financial elite of the city
| CydeWeys wrote:
| There's no way this is correct. I live in NYC and this would
| represent a turn-over of nearly half of our population. It's
| simply not true. The study is wrong:
|
| > About 3.57 million people left New York City this year
| between Jan. 1 and Dec. 7, according to Unacast, which analyzed
| anonymized cell phone location data. Some 3.5 million people
| earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that
| same period, the report showed.
|
| Questionable methodology that clearly yielded incorrect
| results.
| johnnyb9 wrote:
| The top 1% of earners pay 40% of New York City's income tax.
| The real question is how will NYC cope with the decreased tax
| base.
| criddell wrote:
| Does it cost more per capita to run NYC than it does smaller
| cities like Austin?
| foota wrote:
| Maybe not to run, but the capital investment is probably
| higher. As well as things like subways, which there isn't
| one of in Austin.
| abernard1 wrote:
| Education, healthcare, and public employees are almost
| always the largest expenses.
|
| For instance, in CA, only about $100M a year out of the
| $100 _billion_ a year budget is spent on transportation
| [1].
|
| Because of prop 98 in CA, a _minimum_ of 40% of the
| budget has to go to education [2].
|
| In NY, it's only 4% spent on transportation [3].
|
| [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/California%27s_sta
| te_budg...
|
| [2] https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_98,_Ma
| ndatory...
|
| [3] https://openbudget.ny.gov/overview.html
| snissn wrote:
| i tried to negotiate being month to month at my manhattan apt at
| the same rate and my land lord wouldn't accommodate me. Now the
| apt has been unrented for a few months and they're asking for a
| 10% drop in rent and probably won't get it for a long long time.
| happily commenting from hawaii
| raverbashing wrote:
| Real estate, being a straightforward investment attracts those
| who couldn't be making more money at pretty much any other type
| of investment.
|
| Hence you get the most clueless people managing the properties.
| [deleted]
| wdb wrote:
| Probably it's better to write it off as a loss than lower the
| rent
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| The absence of income is not a "loss", certainly not a
| taxable one. This is not how landlords make money.
| pc86 wrote:
| The landlord's paying for the building no matter what, so
| it's possible that depending on how it's leveraged and
| their income overall, they'd rather lose money and get a
| reduction in taxable income than break even with lowered
| rent.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Why?
| alliao wrote:
| how'd you compare with your cost of living overall?
| Dig1t wrote:
| Wow, good for you, that is awesome.
| jere wrote:
| >In Tribeca, a wealthy neighborhood in downtown Manhattan,
| residents who left this year earned an average income of about
| $140,000, Walle said. The typical person moving into the
| neighborhood earned an average $82,000, he said.
|
| I was going to ask if we might call this "de-gentrification" and
| if that's a good thing, right? I'm sitting here in disbelief
| after a quick search reveals that the actual average income is
| $879,000. So now I'm thinking those numbers above don't mean much
| of anything.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/tribeca-new-york-city-riches...
| blackrock wrote:
| > residents who left this year earned an average income of
| about $140,000
|
| Averages tend to mask the true reality.
|
| If a corporate executive makes $10 million dollars a year. And
| the next 100 people makes $100,000 a year. Then the total is
| $20 million dollars.
|
| When you divide this by 101, you get an average of $198,000.
| Which is nearly double what the normal person in this example
| earns.
|
| The better metric is to use the median salary. Which in this
| example is $100,000. And the executive's salary is the outlier.
|
| Then again, most executives are paid in tax deferred stock
| options. And they cash out for a gold pot after a few years.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Mean is not the same as median. Billionaires drag the mean
| average up but not the median average. Most people in that area
| are not earning almost 1 million even though it is pricey.
| jfengel wrote:
| What you're calling de-gentrification isn't really the opposite
| of gentrification. Gentrification is the destruction of long-
| standing neighborhoods and the displacement of poor people, who
| may have no good place to go and lose their support structures.
| Often, those poor people rent their homes/apartments, and so
| they don't benefit from the increase in prices. Their rent just
| goes up until they have to leave.
|
| Rich people fleeing doesn't bring them back. Whatever they
| suffered in displacement is just sunk. In the very long term it
| may form part of a new cycle of gentrification, but only after
| the neighborhood has lost a lot of its old value and is usually
| accompanied by the kinds of desperation that poverty causes.
|
| So it's not a good thing -- though you're right that this study
| is so dubious that it may not even really be an issue.
| mikestew wrote:
| _I 'm sitting here in disbelief after a quick search reveals
| that the actual average income is $879,000._
|
| I don't live anywhere near NYC, and probably haven't visited
| more than a half dozen times, and even I know that $140K/year
| isn't getting you into Tribeca these days (granted, I
| occasionally glance at the NYT real estate section). I would
| expect someone covering that beat to be able to do that gut-
| check and, I dunno, maybe double-check those numbers.
| vrperson wrote:
| de-gentrification is a good thing if you don't like cupcakes
| and cafes and nice restaurants and nice shops.
| yurielt wrote:
| ANd if you like payable rent non obnoxious hipsters and their
| shitty music, POC and people that have politics informed by
| more than buzzfeed
| hikerclimb wrote:
| Nice
| pushcx wrote:
| Or in context, they estimate NYC lost a net 0.8% of its residents
| and the average income of the incoming and outgoing cohorts
| differ by -$8,055/y. It multiplies to a big dollar figure because
| NYC is big and rich.
|
| The original content marketing: https://global-
| uploads.webflow.com/5dc3e2af6a906d9cc232e1bc/...
|
| It explains that they're extrapolating from three NYC
| neighborhoods (Astoria, Tribeca, and Williamsburg). I'm not an
| NYC expert and I'm not going to research these claims further,
| but I think those are quite well-off neighborhoods and not likely
| representative of NYC in terms of income or pandemic mobility.
|
| This article feels like Reuters lightly rewrote an ad for
| Unacast.
| octoberfranklin wrote:
| But... but... but... muh urbanism!
| popup21 wrote:
| +1 Stay woke, go broke
| ralusek wrote:
| There is a reason that the people with the most aggressive social
| policies tend to also be the least in favor of federalism/local
| politics, because of this exact problem: people will just leave.
|
| If your system makes life worse for a certain group of people,
| you either need to prevent that group from leaving altogether, or
| ensure that there is no place that they can go to. If you iterate
| this to the logical conclusion, you end up with something like
| "globalism."
|
| In this particular case, this is mostly to do with not wanting to
| live in places with strict lockdown policies, high rates of
| homelessness and criminality, while simultaneously paying much
| more in taxes and living expenses, and seeing few of the benefits
| of being in an urban hub while doing it.
|
| But my point stands: don't forget how quickly people will be
| willing to upend their lives at the very moment their existence
| is sufficiently worse than it would be elsewhere. And when you
| target the wealthy, you target the people most capable of moving
| anywhere else.
| gltchkrft wrote:
| What ever happened to making the place attractive so people
| actually choose to live there ?
|
| You are talking about forcing people into situations that they
| are unhappy with, like it's normal or ethical.
|
| The people who pay for the infrastructure and services are free
| to leave to more attractive places when they feel like they are
| being exploited. It's the city's responsibility to manage
| itself in a way that keeps residents satisfied. If the
| residents feel like they are getting the short end of the
| stick, they are right to leave and many will do so. Then you
| are left with those who had no choice and good luck getting
| them to fund your bloated, inefficient and needless projects.
|
| The policy makers are in charge of just that, making policy.
| The residents have little control over that, but they do
| control where they live.
| tqi wrote:
| > There is a reason that the people with the most aggressive
| social policies tend to also be the least in favor of
| federalism/local politics, because of this exact problem:
| people will just leave.
|
| I don't think that has anything to do with it. Whether people
| are in favor of or against local politics is mostly based on
| whether or not they share the same opinions as their local
| politicians. For example, look at the fight over California
| Emission standards. People just want to have things their way -
| everything else is just hot air and posturing.
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