7 ms·

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 serv

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - Merman_Mike 6y ago
    > There is no reason we cannot have competent civil servants, long term planning, clean cities, etc. I agree absolutely. That's what makes it so frustrating.
    - rayiner 6y ago
      Why do you think that's true? Many (most?) countries don't have competent civil servants, long term planning, clean cities, etc. Why do we just assume Americans can do it when say Italians cannot?
  - abernard1 6y ago
    > part of it is the Republican party starving the beast, part of it is the government as a giant jobs program. Take a look at how long metro cities in the U.S. have been run by Democrats, and then tell me this is a Republican problem.
  - edbob 6y ago
    It's absurd to blame Republicans for the Democrats' failures and corruption. The Democrats have a nearly insurmountable demographic advantage that has been steadily building for decades. If they could pass as even semi-competent, they would absolutely wipe the floor with the Republicans. Their failure is theirs alone. To expand on what abernard1 said, Democrats have had uninterrupted control of some major cities for 60-80 years. The fact that those cities have turned out so poorly can only be blamed on the Democratic politicians in those cities. They are corrupt in every way. As long as people excuse their failures with "But Republicans!", they will continue to get away with their corruption.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > 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. Blaming individualism and "the Republican Party" is bizarre in connection with a complaint about "incompetent government on a local level." Almost all of the local governments people complain about (San Francisco, New York City, etc.) are completely dominated by Democrats. Of 51 seats on the New York City Council, just 3 are held by Republicans, and only 1 of those isn't on Staten Island. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is all Democrats. This is not a matter of my team versus your team, but a real dysfunction in our political system. If people in blue cities in blue states blame Republicans for problems with education, transportation, policing, planning, etc., then there is literally no accountability. We saw this happen this summer. George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. Almost everything to do with his training, pay, etc., was decided by the Minneapolis City Council or the Minneapolis Mayor. The last Republican on the city council left office 23 years ago. There hasn't been a Republican mayor of Minneapolis since 1973. That guy served for a day--the last Republican who served a real term left office in 1961. Somehow, police brutality in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City, etc., was laid at the feet of Trump has his voters, who have pretty much nothing to do with and no power over municipal services in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City, etc.
    - tptacek 6y ago
      There's a lot of truth in that, but it's not strictly true. The Obama DOJ pursued and enforced consent decrees over a bunch of local police departments; the incoming Republican DOJ announced that they were backing away from them. Certainly, national politics has some influence over local policing. But I'm mostly with you. I'm kind of dumbfounded by how much attention gets paid to national/federal policing policy, where change is essentially impossible to achieve, when most people live in suburbs, where 2-3 seats on a village or township board can result in nearly arbitrary policing policy changes for that suburb. Swing House seats are a million-dollar proposition; a village board seat in Oak Park might go for less than $5000 invested. A serious theory of change, and one I think more credible than passing any kind of new federal law: get reformer village boards elected in a scattering of suburbs, get them to pass sharp, meaningful policies (an end to no-knocks, crisis intervention teams, or dream big and have the police stop doing routine traffic enforcement), then prove them out. I've been watching Chicagoland village board meetings for the past couple months, and the modal question that seems to come in policy discussions is "what are the neighboring suburbs doing". Start there! See if you can get a snowball rolling.
  - RickJWagner 6y ago
    Sorry, you can't blame Republicans for mis-managed cities run by Democrats. Detroit? NYC? San Francisco? etc. Democrats bring some good, Republicans do too. But Democrats must own the failures in the cities they dominate.
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  I've lived in a northern European city for an extended period. I paid higher taxes than in NYC. The difference in public transit, public schools, and social services (some of which I used) was night and day compared to NYC. There are absolutely endless stories of NYC government incompetence [1] and corruption [2]. Here are a few recent stories that come to mind: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/nearly-100000-new-york-city-voters-have-been-sent-invalid-absentee-ballots-with-wrong-names-or-addresses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/nearly-100000-new-york... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/nyregion/nyc-schools-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/nyregion/nyc-schools-covi... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/five-current-and-former-mta-employees-charged-with-overtime-fraud-11607037952 https://www.wsj.com/articles/five-current-and-former-mta-emp... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/thrivenyc-mental-health-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/thrivenyc-mental...
- cbozeman 6y ago
  > Don't you think it's exactly the high taxes that give space for corruption and incompetence? No. We know what causes corruption - lack of oversight. Its why you see very little of it in the federal government, but that same oversight is also why federal projects are expensive. Everything must be documented and accounted for. As far as incompetence in government, that's easy... smart people can't stand being constrained by rules designed by people that aren't as smart as they are, especially if those rules reduce productivity and stifle creative solutions.
  - babesh 6y ago
    This is patently wrong. Compare the big cities to the small well off cities in the Bay Area. Go see how much oversight is in the big cities versus the small cities. Then look at the level of corruption. Now compare the amount corruption in the military industrial complex to the state governments.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  > There is no reason we cannot have competent civil servants, long term planning, clean cities, etc. I agree absolutely. That's what makes it so frustrating.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Why do you think that's true? Many (most?) countries don't have competent civil servants, long term planning, clean cities, etc. Why do we just assume Americans can do it when say Italians cannot?
- abernard1 6y ago
  > part of it is the Republican party starving the beast, part of it is the government as a giant jobs program. Take a look at how long metro cities in the U.S. have been run by Democrats, and then tell me this is a Republican problem.
- edbob 6y ago
  It's absurd to blame Republicans for the Democrats' failures and corruption. The Democrats have a nearly insurmountable demographic advantage that has been steadily building for decades. If they could pass as even semi-competent, they would absolutely wipe the floor with the Republicans. Their failure is theirs alone. To expand on what abernard1 said, Democrats have had uninterrupted control of some major cities for 60-80 years. The fact that those cities have turned out so poorly can only be blamed on the Democratic politicians in those cities. They are corrupt in every way. As long as people excuse their failures with "But Republicans!", they will continue to get away with their corruption.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > 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. Blaming individualism and "the Republican Party" is bizarre in connection with a complaint about "incompetent government on a local level." Almost all of the local governments people complain about (San Francisco, New York City, etc.) are completely dominated by Democrats. Of 51 seats on the New York City Council, just 3 are held by Republicans, and only 1 of those isn't on Staten Island. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is all Democrats. This is not a matter of my team versus your team, but a real dysfunction in our political system. If people in blue cities in blue states blame Republicans for problems with education, transportation, policing, planning, etc., then there is literally no accountability. We saw this happen this summer. George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. Almost everything to do with his training, pay, etc., was decided by the Minneapolis City Council or the Minneapolis Mayor. The last Republican on the city council left office 23 years ago. There hasn't been a Republican mayor of Minneapolis since 1973. That guy served for a day--the last Republican who served a real term left office in 1961. Somehow, police brutality in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City, etc., was laid at the feet of Trump has his voters, who have pretty much nothing to do with and no power over municipal services in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York City, etc.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    There's a lot of truth in that, but it's not strictly true. The Obama DOJ pursued and enforced consent decrees over a bunch of local police departments; the incoming Republican DOJ announced that they were backing away from them. Certainly, national politics has some influence over local policing. But I'm mostly with you. I'm kind of dumbfounded by how much attention gets paid to national/federal policing policy, where change is essentially impossible to achieve, when most people live in suburbs, where 2-3 seats on a village or township board can result in nearly arbitrary policing policy changes for that suburb. Swing House seats are a million-dollar proposition; a village board seat in Oak Park might go for less than $5000 invested. A serious theory of change, and one I think more credible than passing any kind of new federal law: get reformer village boards elected in a scattering of suburbs, get them to pass sharp, meaningful policies (an end to no-knocks, crisis intervention teams, or dream big and have the police stop doing routine traffic enforcement), then prove them out. I've been watching Chicagoland village board meetings for the past couple months, and the modal question that seems to come in policy discussions is "what are the neighboring suburbs doing". Start there! See if you can get a snowball rolling.
- RickJWagner 6y ago
  Sorry, you can't blame Republicans for mis-managed cities run by Democrats. Detroit? NYC? San Francisco? etc. Democrats bring some good, Republicans do too. But Democrats must own the failures in the cities they dominate.
Merman_Mike 6y ago
I've lived in a northern European city for an extended period. I paid higher taxes than in NYC. The difference in public transit, public schools, and social services (some of which I used) was night and day compared to NYC. There are absolutely endless stories of NYC government incompetence [1] and corruption [2]. Here are a few recent stories that come to mind: [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/nearly-100000-new-york-city-voters-have-been-sent-invalid-absentee-ballots-with-wrong-names-or-addresses.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/nearly-100000-new-york... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/nyregion/nyc-schools-covid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/nyregion/nyc-schools-covi... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/five-current-and-former-mta-employees-charged-with-overtime-fraud-11607037952 https://www.wsj.com/articles/five-current-and-former-mta-emp... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/thrivenyc-mental-health-.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/nyregion/thrivenyc-mental...
cbozeman 6y ago
> Don't you think it's exactly the high taxes that give space for corruption and incompetence? No. We know what causes corruption - lack of oversight. Its why you see very little of it in the federal government, but that same oversight is also why federal projects are expensive. Everything must be documented and accounted for. As far as incompetence in government, that's easy... smart people can't stand being constrained by rules designed by people that aren't as smart as they are, especially if those rules reduce productivity and stifle creative solutions.
- babesh 6y ago
  This is patently wrong. Compare the big cities to the small well off cities in the Bay Area. Go see how much oversight is in the big cities versus the small cities. Then look at the level of corruption. Now compare the amount corruption in the military industrial complex to the state governments.