Tag: New York

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Texas vs. No-​Growth Coasts

Governments must rely upon profitable businesses. Without them, government has next to nothing.

And yet “next to nothing” is what governments can do to best help businesses succeed.

Thank Texas Governor Rick Perry for these thoughts … and Matthew Yglesias, who commented on Perry’s recent “nuclear-​strength” video promotion, inviting businesses to leave places like New York and locate themselves in Texas, which has fewer regulations and no income tax. The ad claims Texas is “big for business.” Yglesias quibbles:

If New York was a terrible place to live, work, and do business, then it would be cheap to live in New York. But New York is not cheap. It’s not Detroit. It’s not even average. It’s, in fact, hellishly expensive. If New York emulated Texas and eliminated its income tax, rich people would bid up the finite supply of New York City land at an even more furious rate — the city wouldn’t see Houston or Dallas growth rates.

I’m no economist, but I have quibbles with Yglesias’s critique. New York is expensive, yes. But the cause of the expense isn’t just that people bid up housing and services. It’s expensive in no small part as a result of all those regulations, especially courtesy of one regulation in particular: rent control. Get rid of rent control and the city income tax? Watch housing grow.

And growth, Yglesias rightly points out, is what’s really in Texas’s favor. Texan low-​impact government policies favor growth, while “the residents and politicians” of blue-​state/​beach-​front states, though “liberal,” have, in fact, “become exceptionally small‑c conservative and change averse.” Because they do too much, allegedly to “help.” But mostly to gentrify.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism

A Big Gulp of Tyranny

Little things mean a lot. One, they add up. Two, they often express something big, like love between a married couple — or a bully’s determination to control your every move.

In the case of New York City’s impending ban on Big Soda, the something big is Big Brother’s claim of a right to regulate or outlaw everything that might somehow, someday harm somebody. Never mind how indirect or trivial the alleged harm may be. And never mind that such regulation inflicts far more grievous harm to the individual’s own ability to judge what is good for himself, and to act on that judgment in co-​operation with others.

Mayor Bloomberg’s new nanny law prohibits restaurants, bars, and other food-​serving establishments from selling sodas in containers of more than 16 ounces. That includes carafes served to tables of four, eight or ten. It includes two-​liter bottles of soda that New Yorkers might want to order with their pizza. The law is stupid and tyrannical, and a vicious precedent.

Bold, fizzy action is called for. New Yorkers should defy the prohibition. Set up a test case, with the city imposing a fine on one or more businesses for continuing to sell large doses of carbonation. This would allow, then, the Institute for Justice, the ACLU or some other freedom-​minded organization help fight the fine and the law in court.

And let there be protests in front of City Hall, peaceful and principled, with Big Soda served to all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Ugly in New York

Part of New York State’s emotionally motivated, hastily concocted new gun control law requires persons owning ugly-​looking guns — semi-​automatic rifles — to register them with the government.

Officials may protest that they don’t intend to go rounding up the ugly-​looking guns. They may also insist that the new law makes it harder for a newsroom to publicize the names and addresses of gun owners (as the Journal News of White Plains, New York recently did).

But a registry that exists is a registry that can be accessed, and abused, despite any official’s alleged good intentions. Many advocates of gun control, including the Senate’s chief sponsor of a new assault weapons ban, admit that if they had their druthers, they’d outlaw all privately held guns. How would the registry be used then?

Many New York owners of ugly guns are up in arms, so to speak. Why? Because they don’t see themselves as criminal suspects properly tracked for exercising constitutional rights. There are good reasons why good people might refuse to voluntarily add their names and addresses to a list of targets.

Brian Olesen, president of one of New York State’s largest gun dealers, says he’s heard “from hundreds of people that they’re prepared to defy the law, and that number will be magnified by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, when the registration deadline comes.”

It’s not just some guns that look ugly. Turning peaceful people into criminals by a mere act of legislation is ugly in the extreme.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Big Box, Big Apple

Whether to let a business open up should not hinge on opinion polls. But a recent survey of New Yorkers does underscore the absurdity of banning Wal-​Mart from the Big Apple.

If you’re used to seeing a Wal-​Mart every 30 miles, you may be surprised to learn that there’s not a single Wal-​Mart in New York’s five boroughs. Unions have marshaled political clout to keep the company out. Now, with the store again trying to gain a foothold in the area, “community” activist Pat Boone complains that “We need good paying jobs, not minimum wage jobs.” Wal-​Mart pays more than minimum wage. But ask yourself: Is no pay for no work really better than a reasonable entry-​level wage that sustains some folks’ homes and hearths?

And who is the “we” that this “community” activist speaks of? The unemployed workers who would flock to the job-​application lines if Wal-​Mart came to town? The 71 percent of New Yorkers who, according to Douglas Schoen’s survey of 1000 New Yorkers, would cram the store’s aisles?

Too often, political power caters to interest groups eager to force others to conform to their own way of thinking. Markets, by contrast, are all about offering a value and then letting people decide for themselves whether they want to pay for it.

So let Wal-​Mart open up, New York. Let honest, hard-​working people get the best deals for food and supplies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders political challengers

The Accidental Citizen Legislator

Humor writer. Mom. And politician?

That third item wasn’t in Susan Konig’s life plan. But six years ago, her fellow residents of Westchester County, New York, were having trouble with a local waste company. Susan wondered what she could do about it. Someone suggested she run for office.

But she wasn’t a politician, just a writer — and not even a political writer. And where was she going to find the time?

Still, Susan agreed to give it some thought. Then she got pregnant with her fourth child and stopped giving it thought. Then sewage backed up into her house. Twice. So she ran for the board of trustees as a Republican in a dominantly Democratic town, and won. She worked to curb taxes and spending. She got rid of the irresponsible waste company.

She narrowly lost re-​election. After agreeing to run at the country level, she narrowly lost to a Democratic incumbent who had won by a large margin in his previous race.

Susan Konig doesn’t see either electoral loss as a tragedy, given the cage-​rattling she accomplished. She learned that a great many people in both parties are sick of runaway taxes and spending. She also learned that even where political establishments are corrupt and calcified, opportunities remain for citizen legislators to do something about it. 

Of course, she learned that lesson by proving it, herself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Property Grab, Bad

Good news and bad news. The good news is that a New York appellate court has ruled against the plundering of private property.

The court determined that New York State cannot use eminent domain to grab land for Columbia University’s expansion project. According to the ruling, assertions that the neighborhoods to be grabbed are “blighted” are mere sophistry, cooked up to justify a decision that had already been made — hardly a shocking revelation to longtime students of eminent domain abuse.

Property owners in the threatened area are jubilant about the ruling. Nicholas Sprayregen, an owner of self-​storage warehouses who has refused to sell to the university, says he was “always cautiously optimistic.” But he also knew that “we were going against 50 years of unfair cases against property owners.”

Unfortunately, an appeal of the decision will be heard in the New York State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, which just ruled six to one that the state was justified in grabbing land to turn over to a Brooklyn developer for the so-​called Atlantic Yards project.

Columbia already owns some 95 percent of the land they wanted for their multi-​billion-​dollar project. As Sprayregen notes, they could easily proceed without the 5 percent owned by the holdouts. But to avoid a little inconvenience, university officials seemed willing to violate the rights and destroy the livelihoods of others.

It’s sad.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.