Predictions are hard, especially about the future:
Kevin Williamson, at the National Review, suggests a good amount of Manhattan’s income is mobile enough for De Blasio to scare away through the inevitable taxation and wealth-transfer that’s going to occur:
‘And as Mike Bloomberg was lambasted for pointing out, you can’t ignore the super-rich, either, given that fewer than 100,000 New Yorkers pay half the city’s taxes, and 500 of them pay 15 percent of the city’s taxes. That is problematic in and of itself, but it’s not like everybody else gets off the hook — de Blasio’s tax hike on those who make $500,000 or more will have real consequences for people in less rarefied income brackets’
Dan Mitchell suggests this wealth-transfer from private to public will happen, but that some of de Blasio’s ambitions may be thwarted by Cuomo and the state government in Albany:
‘If you put a gun to my head, I suspect de Blasio will get some sort of tax hike, but probably not what he wants.
So what will that mean? It’s hard to answer that question without also know[ing] what will happen on the spending side of the budget. If he pays off his union supporters by augmenting the already excessive pay and benefits of city workers, then New York City will be on the fast track to fiscal trouble.’
Of course, some are speculating that the Big Apple is headed back to 70’s-style crime rates, fear and seediness (amusing but highly speculative rant at Sultan Knish: It’s De Blasio Time). Myron Magnet, at the City Journal, recalls what it was like during those days, and hopes De Blasio stays strong on crime so that NYC won’t need broken windows-style policing:
Home, when you got there, was a mini-fortress. We had triple locks on our doors, and we were expert in the competing merits of the different varieties–the deadbolt, the Segal (though debates raged on the most pick-proof cylinder), and the top-of-the-line Fox Police Lock, with its four-foot steel bar wedging the door shut from a steel-lined hole in the floor.
Josh Barro argues that De Blasio will work hand-in-hand with real estate developers to fund his plans and keep his coalitions together:
‘Inclusionary zoning is not my preferred approach to affordable housing. Directing developers to build luxury apartments and rent them at a discount to people with low incomes is an inefficient way of housing the poor and the middle class. But the land under New York City is so valuable that upzoning it will create tremendous economic and fiscal benefits, even if some of those benefits are allocated inefficiently.’
Someone’s going to be paying for all of this.
Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
Related On This Site: Richard Epstein At Defining Ideas: ‘City Planners Run Amok’…Virginia Postrel At Bloomberg: ‘How The Elites Built America’s Economic Wall’...The Irish were a mess: William Stern At The City Journal: ‘How Dagger John Saved New York’s Irish’
Politicians and politics likely won’t deliver you from human nature, nor fulfill your dreams in the way you want: anarchy probably won’t either: Two Sunday Quotations By Albert Jay Nock in ‘Anarchist’s Progress’
Josh Barro At Business Insider: ‘Dear New Yorkers: Here’s Why Your Rent Is So Ridiculously High’