| | Barbara,
I'm not sure where you live but I can tell you that they don't need my ideas they are coming up with ideas just like these on their own. (Well accept for the literally eating people part, its damn close to it in taxes though)
Let me give you an idea of exactly how bad it is here.
Buffalo has been in the hands of the Union Democrats since the birth of US Steel. 50 plus years of these people being in charge worked when they had government protections on their side but NAFTA and other Free Trade agreements along with just normal global and national competition has caused many of the intelligent business owners to flee this massively overpriced labor market. All the fleeing businesses coupled with the related population decline has left the tax base in shambles but this has only caused the Democrats in charge to increase taxes and spending. I was born here and until I started studying more into economics I never realized that I was witnessing a very interesting cycle, the death throws of a city trying to evade the truth of its situation.
- The more people who move away
- The smaller the tax base becomes
- To make up for the lack of funds, they increase taxes.
- Increase in taxes causes a decline in businesses, So more flee.
- Every time businesses leave, more people go on government assistance programs
- Couple that with the people who move here from other places to get onto the rather generous assistance programs
- So that leaves us with a decline in the productive and an increase in the unproductive moochers.
- A decrease in tax base, increase in taxation and out of control spending practices of people trying to live in 1950 unionized buffalo, while providing for all those in ‘need’ at the same time.
But that is only the city of Buffalo, the county of Erie which the city of Buffalo resides in, is in the same situation as the city. The county has been trying to prop up the city with sales tax dollars in the past ten years and as a result of that and what the sate has done, they too are resting near destruction. You see the state of New York has passed the most generous Medicaid Bill ever seen in the history of our great state and because they couldn’t afford it in their Budgets they have mandated the counties of New York pay for it. In short, our choice is raise the sales tax from 8.25% to 9.25% OR raise county property taxes (which are 50% higher than the national average) OR we start cutting county services and lay off 3000 county workers and close the county to make Medicaid costs.
Of the choices a good portion of the privately employed people want the last rather than be bitten by the first two as they have in the past. The problem is that the deficiency between the population of the productive and that of the unproductive results in the un-productive being able to vote ‘bread and circus’ every time at the costs of their fellow citizens.
This is just the beginning though. In my lifetime, the city of Buffalo has become completely bankrupt and this year it has spread to the county of Erie. If no reasonable reform comes then it won’t be long till this state rests in the grave it has dug for itself.
I became an Objectivist to realize I am standing in the lands of the enemy.
Shrug Away,
~Eric.
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