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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.
3 comments:
I have to wonder why people stay there. What trumps the downsides?
When I step back and look at the dilapidated crap house I live in just outside Greenville, and how much I pay each month in rent, and how close it is to every fast food joint, I say, "You've done, well for yourself, Paddy, you've done well." I've just enough left over to get drunk.
Whatever it is, they either ban it or tax it. A court decision today adds $2.50 more to the starting meter on taxis (on top of the other taxes they've already added). The town is becoming expensively and puritanically unlivable. And meanwhile the residents of Public Housing--all the folks they pretend to care about--go without heat, hot water, and working elevators, but not a shortage of mold, vermin and violent crime. Or as somebody once put it,, but meant it a different way: "New York, New York, it's a hell of a town."
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