New York City: High Rents and High Taxes

Leave it to the Big Apple. Not only is New York City the center of American and world finance. Not only has it become a high tech hub. But, New York City has been ruled by liberals and leftists for as long as anyone can remember… at least until the time of Giuliani. Somehow or other, the city, like most blue cities, has divided into the rich and the rest. The rich are very rich and the rest are frankly poor.

Now, given the financial condition of city dwellers, activists are mounting a campaign against Amazon, for the crime of bringing more business and more jobs to New York. People who elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress are not the brightest of the bright.

In the realm of financial distress, New York City dwellers are leading the nation. Something that Comrade de Blasio is surely proud of.

New York City is officially the most financially distressed metropolis in America, according to local debt counselors and financial analysts.

The city’s credit card delinquency rates and level of bad personal debt are the highest in the nation, which saw household debt and credit soar by $219 billion, or 1.6 percent, to $13.51 trillion, in the third quarter of 2018 — a record $837 billion more than its previous peak in 2008.

Facing an environment of mounting personal bankruptcies and financial meltdowns, unprecedented numbers of local residents are just one paycheck away from total monetary disaster.

The latest surge in toxic debt is blowing a huge hole in New Yorkers’ personal finances, these experts say. Forty percent of Americans recently said they could not cover a $400 emergency — and that proportion may be even higher in New York City, analysts say.

City dwellers are drowning in debt. They are living paycheck to paycheck. More and more of them are on the verge of personal bankruptcy. The reason, as one refreshing mayoral candidate insisted a few years back: the rent is too damn high. Then again, so too are the taxes:

Credit card debt troubles in particular have jumped in New York City, from 30 percent of client caseloads at GreenPath to 40 percent in the past few years, even as housing and mortgage stress cases stemming from the financial crisis have ebbed.

New York City is now its No. 1 metro market, followed by Atlanta and Los Angeles, as measured by the sheer volume of distressed consumers seeking assistance and relief, according to Money Management International, a nationwide credit-counseling network.

“New York has the second-most expensive housing market in the US; rents are rising along with interest rates and credit card and other debt, including auto loans,” said Thomas Nitzsche, a consumer debt expert at Money Management International, citing some of the nonprofit’s latest findings.

Obviously, what cannot long continue will not long continue. Just as more people are leaving San Francisco, over the high rents and the high taxes, so too will more and more New Yorkers leave the city, over high rents and high taxes.