As has been discussed here on UE a number of times, NYC's economic future is being destroyed by the tax-and-spend policies that have been instituted over the last 8 years. One result of those reckless policies is the state of Small Business in the Big Apple. In this great piece by Kyle Smith, one man's story is told to demonstrate what is really going on in the NYC local economy...
The jobicidal maniacs in Albany and City Hall — The Market’s Rejects — are terrorizing business owners like Gil Cygler of Brooklyn, who owns All Car Rent a Car, one of the few locally-owned car rental businesses. He employs about 75 New Yorkers.
“There used to be a car rental tax at 6%,” says Cygler. “The state raised it to 11%. That’s on top of the sales tax, which is almost 9%. When you rent a car, you’re basically paying 20% to rent a car. That’s a huge imposition.”
Which cuts down on his customers, which cuts down on his profits, which cuts down on his ability to expand, which cuts down on his ability to hire.
...this is true not only for NYC, but for the State and the Nation as well. Our tripartite governmental structures are killing small businesses and are essentially making a difficult employment environment exponentially worse. The piece goes on...
The car rental tax (sock it to those out-of-towners! It’s not like tourism is an important part of the New York economy) does burden New Yorkers — Cygler estimates that 90% to 95% of his customers live in the city — and Gotham businesses. Cygler’s customers can PATH it over to New Jersey to save money or just skip the weekend road trip in the first place.
As for the teeny-weeny 0.34% payroll tax, imposed last spring on all employers to pay off the MTA’s unions, Cygler asks, “If you look at it on a dollar is it that much more? No. But by us, it’s a $50,000 tax.”
Running a real business, it turns out, is a little different from running New York. Cygler can’t order his customers to pay for his shortfalls. “We take in X and that’s all we can spend. I think it’s critical for state governments to say, ‘Where do we cut?’ instead of “How do we raise fees?’ “
So “stick it to the rich” turns out to mean “stick the knife in Mom and Pop.” Actually, what’s happening in New York is worse than a horror movie.
...when will we collectively realize that the vicious circle of reckless government spending and the increased taxes needed to support it, just leads to less private-sector economic activity and more unemployment and, to complete the circle, more government spending and taxation?
The self-fulfilling prophecy advocated by the Left is approaching quickly - accelerated by last year's economic turmoil - and there are few elected officials in office today who are willing to put an end the carnage.
With the so-called "Stimulus" being reported as the savior of capitalism by most in the MSM today, there is a good likelihood that another injection of public sector capital will be coming over the next few months. This not only stalls the real reforms needed in local government, such as realistic belt-tightening, but makes the ever-growing group of public sector employment addicts more dependent on government's "generosity." Although there will be pain across the board when government stops propping up our over-leveraged American Lifestyle, that pain must come if we are to save our free-market economy that has served us so well for the last 200 plus years.
We are doomed if we don't start to find a way to end the cycle and institute policies that expand private-sector economic activity. Sadly, I'm not hopeful our leaders in Albany, City Hall and Washington get it quite yet. I just hope the voters start to figure this out sooner rather than later and the Republican Party starts running candidates for office who will appeal to them in this vain...
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written by Jay Golub , December 16, 2009
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/l...I8KUsppgyI
So with all the tax and fee increases implemented by the MTA Board recently, we STILL will have to cut routes and other important parts of the MTA's operations. What a scandal this truly is.
We destroy our economy by taxing businesses to the point where it doesn't pay to run an operation in NYC. Then we make the fares ever higher and higher so that it almost doesn't pay to go to work any longer.
And now there is talk of, even with everything done as mentioned in the thread above, putting tolls on ALL the East-River bridges!
If there is a better demonstration as to why we need to privatize the public transportation system (or at a minimum break up the giant bureaucratic entity), I don't know where to find it...
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