The Dog That Didn’t Bark
Here’s an interesting NY Times story about how people in their 20′s and 30′s are abandoning upstate New York for locales South and West:
In almost every place upstate, emigration rates were highest among college graduates, producing a brain drain, according to separate analyses of census results for The New York Times by two demographers, William Frey of the Brookings Institution and Andrew A. Beveridge of Queens College of the City University of New York. Among the nation’s large metropolitan areas, Professor Frey said, Buffalo and Rochester had the highest rates of what he called “bright flight.”
Irwin L. Davis, president of the Metropolitan Development Association in Syracuse, which promotes economic growth in central New York, said, “We’re educating them and they’re leaving.”
And Gary D. Keith, vice president and regional economist for M & T Bank, said, “Sluggish job growth is the biggest driver of out-migration among young upstate adults.”
The decline in the 1990′s in the population ages 18 to 44 of the 52-county upstate region was “chilling,” he said.
“When the jobs don’t grow, the people go,” Mr. Keith said.
More interesting, however, is what the Times can’t bring itself to say in the story: there isn’t a single mention of New York’s high taxes and rampant government regulatory regimes, or the relative lack therof in the (er, “red”) Sun Belt states. Was it just too much trouble for the Times to admit that jobs (and thus people) are leaving for places that are more ameniable to, you know, employers?
Apparently so. Like Old Europe, America’s high-tax, high-regulation states are literally pricing themselves out of the job market–and they’re losing population as a result. Pity the “newspaper of record” can’t bring itself to say so.
Also GLARING OMISSION from the article:
Hillary Clinton won upstate NY by promising to create jobs and revitalize the area.
Wonder why that was left out?
Where the hell has ‘The Times’ been? Young people have been fleeing upstate for nearly twenty years.
We have quite a few upstate New Yorkers here in the upstate of SC. Most were able to sell their houses in NY and get 3 or 4x their money’s worth here. Factor in the better weather, lower cost of living, friendly folks, etc. and you have a no-brainer.
Hmm… I only left upstate NY to stay employed; going from there to California certainly didn’t _reduce_ my taxes
The young and the restless have always left the area for school and, maybe, fame and fortune. Our experience is that a great number return to raise their children here. Oddly enough, those children are choosing to remain in the area. Perhaps the grandchildren will take flight, just as we did, returning to nest and mate. The slower pace and overall safety of the area, combined with lower homeowner and living costs, make it ideal for raising families. Most of the Bright Flighters will be back.
Know what was left out, Maggie?
Since Senator Carpetbagger took office, upstate NY has lost a net total of 40,000 jobs. State and local government policies have more impact on the the economy here than anything Carpetbagger can or can’t do on our behalf. But any newspaper or reporter with any sand would point out the discrepancy between her pledge and economic realities.
Something else about the NYT article that REALLY pisses me off is that it decries the shrinking tax base while not acknowledging NY has the worst business climate in the entire country.
Regards,
-the Canine Pundit
As a Rocheserian, this is not news or surprising. To give some an example of what local government thinking is – Rochester is just about at it’s constitutional limit for property taxes, and is probably going to raise them again. The City’s property inventory (properties the city has become owner of due to tax foreclosure – due mostly to property abandonment) continues to climb. Landlords who would buy properties and fix them up to rent out / re-sell are abandoning the City. The City’s fix – institute a new lead paint law that is going to cost landlords thousands of dollars to perform abatements.
And, they wonder why the properties are being abandoned and so few people want to invest in properties in the City. (and, let’s note even talk about the millions $$ lost by the City on the fast-ferry debacle).
Now take that example, and extrapolate from the local government to NY State government and see why nobody with a mind would want to invest in this area.
I went to Syracuse and now live in NYC, typical of many ‘Cuse grads. There is one overarching reason for the flight from Central New York:
The weather there is freakin’ awful.
I lived in Albany for 10 years and worked at the State Legislature for a good portion of that time. Every year we heard how the Governor (first Cuomo, then Pataki) say that they would help upstate’s economy.
They would say that they’d do some new program to help Buffalo or Rochester, and every year more people would head south (whether to NYC) or out of the state.
It isn’t just the high tax burden, or lack of jobs, but some of the major upstate companies (read employers) – Kodak, Corning, Bausch and Lomb have either run into major problems (changed markets, lawsuits, etc.), or moved jobs out of the state. Nothing has moved in to replace them.
The Capital District has seen some improvement with a tech center opening around RPI and SUNY Albany’s nanotech/semiconductor research, and that might help that area.
The rest of upstate? SOL.
Brian, I have to disagree. The Syracuse area gets an unfair rap due to the amount of snow we get and large number of cloudy days. We typically get a bunch of days in the winter where it snows a little bit, but surprisingly few large storms. You come home from work, push the 4 to 6 inches of new lake-effect snow off your driveway and walk, and go inside and have dinner.
I moved to Syracuse from Boston ten years ago, and it’s not like it was 75 and sunny there year-round. Since I’ve moved out here, I’ve also noticed how many large storms have struck the Boston area, while we’ve suffered far fewer such events here. They had a terrible winter there this year.
Oh, only a bunch of days where you get 4 to 6 inches.
I’d say the area’s rap is entirely fair, citing “the amount of snow we get and large number of cloudy days.”
I’m just making the point that a primary reason for the area’s inability to retain young, upwardly mobile people is one that can not be fixed.
People will overlook weather if other significant factors are compelling enough. Seattle is notorious for its crappy weather (more cloudy days annually than any of the upstate NY cities), yet has been a trendy place to live for most of my adult life.
If the Syracuse area were to turn it around and become one of the hotbeds of “green building” technology in the next decade, folks would be praising all the great winter recreational opportunities around here instead of complaining about the snow.
People will overlook weather if other significant factors are compelling enough.
Absolutely. I do software development for financial planners here in Silicon Valley, and they’ve been watching their clients (who usually remain their clients) move to Washington, Florida, Nevada . . . states with no state income tax, but weather far inferior to the hard-to-beat weather here. I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay here myself.
Rob — Just for god’s sake don’t let them vote like New Yorkers or you’ll get stuck with the same mess they just left…
The problem with New York is not just the high taxes and bad weather, it’s the crappy government.
I moved to upstate NY from Ohio about 2 years ago and tried to get a NY drivers license. I was told that in addition to my Ohio’s driver’s license, I needed X number of ‘points’ to prove my id. I’d just moved, so my passport was in a bag somewhere, and even with the credit cards in my wallet, my birth certificate, and a letter addressed to me in NY, I was still a point short.
When I became incredulous at this, I was told that I needed to prove my identification to get a NY driver’s license. That an Ohio Driver’s License was *not sufficient* to prove it to the State of NY. That because of 9/11, they couldn’t waive or alter this the rule. I pointed out that I wasn’t applying for a pilot’s license, and that I *could already* drive in NY with my Ohio license. Needless to say they were unimpressed with my arguments.
Then the kicker: The lady told me that I could run down to Price Chopper and get a shopping card, and that would put me over the points limit and allow me to get a NY license. When I asked what I needed to get a Price Chopper card, she said: A photo ID. When I asked what kind of background check Price Chopper performed, since it was the only thing standing between me and a valid NY State license, she said she didn’t know.
At this point I decided: screw ‘em. I’ll stay a legal resident of Ohio. I maintain an address there anyway.
So here I am, months later. No Price Chopper Card. No NY State Driver’s License. Driving around NY with my legal, valid Ohio Driver’s license.
-S
I moved to Syracuse from Boston ten years ago, and it’s not like it was 75 and sunny there year-round.
People aren’t moving to Boston for the weather – they’re moving to places with decent weather. Moving to Syracuse from Boston for the weather is like trying to diet by switching from a Double Quarterpounder with Cheese to a Double Whopper with Cheese.
One of the sayings here in Florida is….”I’ve never had to shovel heat!”
The weather may be a factor, however the price of living in NY is a much larger one.
NY is not alone. Similar things are impacting LA & other metro areas with unreasonable taxes and low-performing governments.
People come to the sunny South as it is vibrant and growing. While our problems with infrastructure are more than they were years ago, they are miniscule by NY standards.
I love the Fall and Spring in the northern tier of states….but Winter is HERE! Florida!
Duke
“Young people have been fleeing upstate for nearly twenty years.”
It’s more like thirty years, Rich. The “Siberacuse” factor has little to do with it. It’s a functional economic depression up here, and it has been as long as I’ve known it.
“The Vampire State”.
We lived in Rochester for 2 years and Saratoga Springs for a year. I did notice that most of the college grads were moving out of the area after graduation in both cases. While the cost of living in Rochester was far, far lower than in L.A., and I had a job (why we moved), it was difficult to impossible for my husband (BA & MA degrees) to find anything other than temp work.
Here in Philadelphia, jobs for him are not an issue. The good thing about living in Rochester right out of LA? Now I can say with a certain degree of authoritay that Philadelphians are kinda wimpy when it comes to cold & snow!
Who cares?
/s/ Unsympathetic Texan in Sunny Texas
Here’s someone who certainly doesn’t get it:
“One of the main missions of the group is to stop the brain drain. And we’re trying to do that by increasing the arts scene and lots of networking.”
So… she thinks people are moving to the South for the “arts scene” and to benefit from “networking” among strangers?
Yeah good luck with that, I’m sure a better arts scene will make up for the stunted business environment, the triple taxation, and the Spitzers and Hillarys.
I left upstate New York in 1980, three months after graduating from High School. By my last calculation, I’ve been back a total of 8 weeks since. For me, the motivating factor was quite simple; I fell in love with the dry heat and mild winters of the greater southwest.
But even had I not, the job situation would have prevented me from returning. In short computer programmer jobs are few and far between in upstate New York.
Interestingly, for the first time in many, many years, my family and I returned to New York last summer. I was quickly reminded of how hot and humid it was, but how strikingly beautiful Lake George is in the summer. Nevertheless, when I drove back to Albany airport through Glenville, Scotia and then Schenectady, I just marvelled at what a dump the whole place was. My wife and kids were just as amazed at what an ugly, tiny place I grew up in.
This is a real problem; with all the high taxes of New York, the infrastructure of the towns and cities is pathetic. Based on just what you can see, you would never guess that my father paid over five times in property tax what I paid when I owned my house here in the west. Even my brother-in-law in California, who bought a house four years ago, pays less than half in property taxes than my father was paying when he sold his house in the mid-90s. (I should also add that my sold his house for less than 4x what he paid to build it in 1964. That’s a really sucky return, especially considering the huge property tax burden.)
It isn’t just property tax. Florida has NO state income tax.
And I’m sorry, but the weather in NYC isn’t that good…. better than upstate, but that is like saying a broken toe is better than a broken tooth…. I don’t want either.
As for the “arts scene” argument, this is the same as the “build a new sports stadium” idea, just done from a different point of view. As if something as meaningless as whether the Reds stay in Cincinnati or move wherever influences whether people stay or go. (I mention Cincinnati because they built 2 brand-new stadiums – baseball and football – on prime river-front land, and the jobs just keep leaving.) An arts scene is nice, but if I don’t have a job in an area, I am unlikely to move because of the number of galleries or the quality of community theater.
Awww, Christ…
I hate doing this, and I told myself I wouldn’t post another comment in response to this entry, especially after I’d had a few, but what the hell…
http://caninepundit.blogspot.com/2006/06/canine-pundit-bites-old-gray-lady.html
The weather doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with whether or not people choose to live upstate New York. If the lousy weather were the primary reason for young people fleeing upstate, then how the hell can you explain the growth of the Twin Cities over the last decade? Having lived there for several years, I can authoratatively state people do not stay there and/or move there on account of the -20 temps in January.
No – NY is FUBAR and, apparently, is quite content to remain that way. Me and the Mrs. (Dr.) are getting the hell out of here before our forthcoming daughter will remember living here.
Stephen Kohls ,pity you didn’t have a matricula card,you’d have been golden,baby.
There are no income taxes in Texas. Zero. Zip. Nada.
A nice 4 bedroom home in a top school district can be bought for 250-350K.
Unemployment for educated professionals with a good work ethic is essentially zero.
Come on down. New Yorkers are smart, tough, hard working, and a lot of fun. We love ya. But we have a hard time understanding what you are saying!
As we say here in Texas about New Yorkers ( and it always gets a laugh from New Yorkers here for a few years )
“Move to Texas. Have a baby. Shop at Costco. Vote for Bush.”
The reason the NYT does not mention the “facts” you talk about is because they do not believe them to be “facts”. The NYT has been a Marxist propaganda machine for almost a century. They were open in their suport of the Boleshiviks 90 years ago and 70 years ago got a Pulitzer for a series of lies put out as “news” articles on Uncle Joe and how kind and caring he was. To the NYT individual initiative has been the cause of all the world’s problems. The current Publisher and Editor of the NYT are both NeoMarxists who believe strongly in government and have no confidence in people as individuals.
Why do I get the feeling that someday if a young person moves from New York State, they will first have to pay a Return On Education and Support Services Tax for ‘draining essential public services’?
Lastly, being from Massachusetts, I’d like to point out that if a person isn’t squeamish about morals or ethics, a good living can be had in riding old cities into the ground. Lots of public expenditures on bad Art Centers, boring and unvisited Historical sites, and large industrial parks for industries coming any day now, and not to mention services on the depressed, drug addicted alcoholic loser who remain to fluff up the social service, law enforcement and jail building industries. There
Welcome to Fulton County, gateway to the Adirondacks. With the state’s highest rates of illegitimate births and venereal disease, her growth industries include, a State Reformatory (former home of Mike Tyson,) a State prison established to isolate Aids patients, a county landfill that imports garbage, a quasi-state agency that has imported literally thousands of the Developmentally Disadvantaged, AKA “retards,” mostly from NYC, and a Wal-Mart return center. If the local powers can just get the feds to relocate that nuclear waste dump, the circle will be complete. Strangely, despite all these advantages, the county is finding it difficult to attract and retain young marrieds; a fact that has stumped county fathers for generations.
Same thing is happening here in Massachusetts … losing jobs and population at a rate higher than the rest of the country.
Of course, it’s blamed on high housing costs (which is part of it), but no mention of an arrogant legislature that refused a tax decrease overwhelmingly voted in by the citizens or the other, everyday insults to the average resident.
Work for a software security company. We just closed our Toronto, Long Island, Albany and Waltham, MA offices and moved them all to Virginia due to the high costs in taxes and wages (from the high cost of living).
For what we were paying approximately 200 employees in those locations we can employee nearly 300 in Virginia. For the same amount of money I can hire 100 more people, produce more product and make more profit. I still have 2 programmer and one tester position open.
These are not low wage jobs. These are professional software development jobs of people making well into 5 figures (none under 50K) and some into 6 figures.
The Commonwealth of Virginia thanks those areas that think high taxes and more government are the answer to your problems. You’ve provided us with a rather nice increase to our tax base.
I moved from Atlanta (ph.d. at Emory) to Geneva, NY for work. One of the most striking things to me when I got here in ’99 was the total absence of swedish cranes on the skylines of Syracuse and Rochester. You can count the number of new buildings with significant sqare footage in either one of them – and I don’t think I’m wrong when I say that the largest buildings built in either city recently were hospitals.
Willisms has an excellent post about the subject at
http://www.willisms.com/archives/2005/11/trivia_tidbit_o_231.html
One very telling thing is a sign I saw while driving home the other day. At the U-Haul store they were offering specials on big moving truck rentals. $300 to rent a truck to take TO California. The outmigration from California right now is outpacing the moving companies ability to take their trucks back there on their own. I found this rather surprising because I live in Houston which is defintely not a “trendy” place to live like Austin.
If you think it’s bad in upstate NY, look at my home state, Iowa. Like most people, I was outta there before the ink was dry on my university diploma.
Insert obligatory Iowa jokes here, but I love my home state. It’s a swell place with great people. Unfortunately they have a habit of electing tax-happy idiots and single issue ag-industry Babbitts who have for generations run the state into the ground. In 1920, Iowa was #10 in US population; it’s now #30 and dropping. No opportunities, but at least they still do education well which enables many of us to escape.
Every time this phenomenon is analyzed, it is attributed to two things; culture and weather. Supposedly we in the degreed hick diaspora head to California and Texas for the warm temps, to Chicago and NYC for excitement.
I call BS. There are several cold weather states, lacking major urban centers, which are doing very well thank you: New Hampshire, Idaho, and Iowa’s next door neighbor South Dakota. Despite having worse weather, and a boredom factor probably 8x the level of Iowa, SD is undergoing a economic and population boom. The reason is clearly low taxes and comparatively hands-off attitude on business development.
Here’s another anectode. We moved from NYC to VA in 2003.
In NYC we were paying $2000/mo for a 600 sq.ft. apartment. In VA, first we moved to a 1500 sq.ft. apartment for which we paid $1440/mo. Then we bought a 3 br townhome for which we paid $250000.
Virtually every community-provided service is better in VA. And government has a lot less influence on our lives. To say nothing of the tax rate.
The decision was a no-brainer for us.
My husband and I own a high tech start up. We live in the Mid Hudson Valley, where we moved after living too many years in Los Angeles and working in the film industry.
Anyway, our company got started in another country because of the investors and some of the research facilities, with the knowledge that we would move it to the US when the time was right. Well that time is now. Because of the type of technology it is, being close to Albany Nanotech would have been nice, BUT the business climate in NY is so insane that not only are we not headquartering the company here (Colorado and Florida are the canidates), but we are moving our residence to Florida and using NY as a vacation home.
The taxes and regulation would make Castro proud but one of the most insane costs is healthcare. If you don’t qualify for Healthy New York and you company hasn’t set up an insurance program yet, you can expect to pay from $900 a month for an individual and over $2000 a month for a family. Same program that you get from Kaiser in CA for about a 1/4 of the price.
The person talking about getting a NY drivers license didn’t lie, but what he doesn’t know is that they were that way in 1998, 3 years before 9/11. We had to go back 3 times to get our car registared because my loan company wrote a letter with only my husband’s name on it.
I love the area I’m at, it is one of the most beautiful places in the US and I will always have a home here, but it isn’t easy and I can certainly see why people are leaving for better opportunities elsewhere. In the state, the Mid Hudson area is the only area with job creation, but not enough to make it a boom area. The other interesting thing to note, while looking for an apartment in NYC, we came across so many buildings converting from offices to apartments and condos….That can’t be a good sign.
JimD and Brian from way back in the comments:
I relocated to Anchorage (active duty USAF). Cold and dark half the year. Not sure I could move back to NY. So weather plays a factor for some people, but not for all.
PS.
NYC is becoming like Paris. An expensive tourist city that is more of a museum than a vital thriving business area. I love NY, but go there and then go to Miami and you can see the difference between a growing city and a stagnant one.
Hey! I moved from upstate to AZ in 1998. Since then my house has Tripled!! in value. And I can still pay my property taxes with change I pull from the couch.
Case closed, period.
A friend of mine in Manhattan is contemplating leaving for the same reason I am contemplating leaving California: unchecked illegal immigration, with a hands off policy from the police, with all the high rents and crime that brings.
When visiting Buffalo on business from Los Angeles 15 years ago, my friend and I were most impressed that cemetaries appeared to be Buffalo’s growth business there. We asked ourselves, “What do people come to Buffalo for, to die?”
There was a fear of one type of growth however: ice on our plane’s wings. We were the last plane out before they closed the airport due to severe weather.
Since 2001, there has been a NET increase of about 2 Million job in the U.S. private sector. In that same period, the U.S. government has CREATED about 2.8 Million jobs in the private sector through various direct program expenditures. Of course the vast majority of these government-created jobs are in defense, security, and government services contracting.
Overall, the economy has NOT BEEN GOOD at Job creation EXCEPT where the Government has born the burden. So when you look at a state like NY, the FIRST QUESTION you have to ask is, how many government created private-sector jobs have there been in NY? Part of the reason the sun-belt states have done well is that it’s been the fruit of massive government largesse in the form of defense and government services contracts.
I’ve lived in Pittsburgh for the last year and a half, and my impression is that it’s pretty similar to upstate NY.
Some people don’t mind it but I find that ceaseless GLOOM for over half the year is not pleasant. It seems to infect the attitudes of the population, too. The whole place seems glum and depressed even during the all too rare days when it’s nice out.
Property taxes on a $200k house here are more than double property taxes on a $400k house in California. Not nice.
My business is heading to Florida as soon as we can figure out how to detach ourselves from some personal issues here.
I think personal issues is what keeps many people here. I’ve almost never seen anyone who really loves this place, and I think that’s a lot of the problem.
D
Oldradus,
Can you source that please????
Love the discussion. It is the same one I have with my mother weekly when she tries to convince me to return to NY. It’s not the weather or the people that keep me away. It is the high taxes, the unfriendly business climate and the tyranical state government that chases us 24-36 year olds away.
I grew up north of Albany, went to school in Rochester and Syracuse. When it came time to find work, I moved to the south, because that is where the jobs are. Now I work with several former New Yorkers (and others from the highly regulated and taxed north east.
What I know is that NY better pull its head from it ass and start to encourage business and manufacturing or else it will lose all of the youth that remains.
Oldradus
“Government created private-sector jobs” is self contradictory.
Psssst: The weather in Oregon is great – going boating on the river today – that’s why we call it God’s country.
Shhhhhh!
Don’t wake up the Grey Lady’s hyper-astute BS peddlers! We still need lots of talented people down here in Dallas to fill out all our open job reqs. If the upstaters figure out that life really is a lot better outside NY and its not just the weather, the flood will continue.
Isn’t it amazing how ignorant so many supposedly well-educated, “sophisticated” people can be?
The flight from upstate New York is decades old. My best friend and I graduated from an Elmira area high school in ’71. We went to college elsewhere and later we both moved to Los Angeles. We figured L.A. is as far as one can get from Elmira without flying over an ocean.
You know New York is fubar when the peoples republic of California is a better place to do business.
It was a great place to grow up, but as adults, we had to leave. There was simply no chance for either of us to have careers in that decaying economy. If you work or try to start a business, New York tax and regulatory authorities do their best to thwart your efforts.
I meet quite a few people in LA who escaped Upstate NY, and some from my hometown. It’s always the same story: terrible economy, nothing to do.
Like one of the previous posters said, sure the climate sucks in New York, but Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis have the same climate or worse. Somehow, those cities are good places to live and work. I place the blame squarely on the fools in Albany.
To understand why New York is f—ed up just look to the state income tax form. Social engineering at it best. Also the liberals in NY has pushes abortions so strongly that the next generation is not there.
Texan Long Islander,
You said,
“Isn’t it amazing how ignorant so many supposedly well-educated, “sophisticated” people can be?”
Someone said that some things are so stupid and idiotic that only a educated person could believe it.
Anyways, follow the money. NY, Massachusetts, the economy now is who gets the taxpayers pound of flesh. Imagine the taxpayer is a whale. There are schools of tax-supported sharks swooping in to rip off a nice big chuck. Lots of fat sharks around. I suppose when the whale is bones; they’ll mosey on down to Texas and Florida.
I was a life-long upstate New Yorker but I left in 1995 because jobs (IBM, GE, Link Flight Simulation, etc) were leaving the Broome County area — and took a real beating on housing costs because several years of high tech job flight had destroyed housing prices in that area. Had to sell my Binghamton house for less than the cost of the land alone in my new neighborhood in Rhode Island. Of course Rhode Island is the home of overpriced but incompetent and corrupt state government that is controlled by special interests and public employee unions and is killing the economy with constantly increasing taxes. (And now they want to increase the corruption by having a casino.) When my wife and I retire we will probably be looking to relocate somewhere more affordable.
Uh, people, it’s upstate new york not the city.
In New York City and the five suburban counties in New York State, the number of people ages 18 to 44 increased by 1.5 percent in the 1990′s. Upstate, it declined by 10 percent.
Over all, the upstate population grew by 1.1 percent in the 1990′s
As a resident of Florida, I have to say that Texas is your best bet. Florida is great, mind you, but the infrastructure issue is just getting worse. If you’re a family with school-age kids, finding a school that’s not composed almost entirely of”temporary” portables will be a chore.
That said, there’s no income tax, sales tax is 6.5% (IIRC) and I’m paying property tax of 1.7% per year. Oh, and my house has at least doubled in value in five years, which means it’s going to be less of a decent deal for those coming in.
Want cheap? Move to Alabama.
Oh, and people do come to Florida to die.
This is easy.
Big Government = Expensive, High Tax Government; Big Government = Lousy Government; Big Government = Public Employee Union Monopoly Power. If you lose at the ballot box and on your tax return, vote with your feet.
Millions already have; millions more will do so.
And the New York Times? Sinking like the Titanic, but only slower.
There are a lot of reasons, many interrelated, for people leaving Upstate and Western NY.
First and foremost, is the high taxes, both income and business. For example, unemployment and worker’s comp taxes are terrible.
Second is/was (I haven’t followed it, lately) great benefits in being poor. Back twenty/thirty years ago, it was a big draw for those needing/wanting assistance. I don’t think one in that position could do better by any other state. As a result budgets skyrocketed. Of course, the State requires counties to fund these costs such that almost two-thirds of Monroe’s budget is taken up by these entitlements. (They are currently considering another hike in sales taxes to 8.75%.
Education, while being pretty good here, is a monetary black hole and the capital improvements ledger has become almost a complete state funding procedure. Needless to say that’s a “good news” structure (as opposed sticking counties with the entitlement spending a “bad news”, a perennial whipping post for politicians) for a state politican campaigning, but it does not encourage thrift. Of course the teaching unions do the rest of the money sucking.
And speaking of money sucking black holes, there’s NYC. Generally, Upstaters and Western NY’ers have gotten somewhere only 1/2 to 2/3′s of our taxes back from the state since around the late 60′s.
Of course, some is just the changing economy. Times have changed and Kodak, for one, is a rump of what it once was. They made bad business decisions, too, one of which was not sending their HQ to a different state, say the way Xerox did some 25 years ago. The decline of American auto industry also, for example, sent shock waves through Rochester.
I don’t think weather is a really big issue above and beyond the trend to warmer climes. Even though Rochester is considered “a cold and distant outpost” (old inside joke), it’s really not too bad, though as the wife says, the winter is a little too long.
But it is getting better with global warming. Soon snow shovels will be a thing of the past here and then we will have the last laugh, selling our accumulated property to the highest bidder from the deserts of the south and inundated coasts.
In the end, though, it is the government. While politicians always want to help, and thinking that from the position of power they can control or remediate problems they only hurt the ones they rule. I’m partly Hamiltonian by philosophy in that I would like a return to monarchy — then there’s only one to hang, saving us from spending a lot of money on rope for even such little things as the STAR program.
Having been born in upstate and lived here most of my life it can be a very pleasant place to live and the Winters are not as bad some would have you believe. The climate did not stop NYS from being one of the most productive places on earth for nearly a century and a half the politicians did.
There is no such thing as a balanced budget, quasi-govermental “Authorities” Port, Power, Thruway etc can act with impunity and raise rates on a whim. NYS is one of the leading producers of electricity in the country but utility rates are second highest in the country, Hawaii being number one. Looking to Albany to try to be sane is a dead end. Many politicians run as reformers but when they get into office they become spendthrifts just like those they ran against. It is all buddy-buddy and the people be damned.
When it comes time for a budget the “Gang of Three”, Governor, head of the Senate and the head of the legislature take it behind closed doors and divy up the people’s money and spend it as they see fit.
As far as Ms Clinton is concerned she still needs to create those 200,000 jobs she promised in 2000 plus another 40,000 to make up for those that disappeared under her watch.
NYS still produces some of the best educated people in the country but without the jobs to keep people here they leave for greener pastures.
In the end without an enormous reduction in personal, property and business taxes NYS will continue to lose it the young educated classes.
In other words NYS, particularly upstate is doomed to more of the same.
I’m in the process of making my move out of Silicon Valley California, and I’m curious if the reasons sound familiar to anyone else. These are:
1) Outrageously high housing costs, along with high property taxes.
2) High cost of living that more or less negates the high-salaries.
3) Employers who demand that the next product cycle take priority over everything in the employee’s life, in order to justify the high wages.
4) Towns filled with parents exhausted by necessity of having two-incomes, who thereby lack the necessary free time to help foster their community. Result: Atomized local society.
5) Infrastructure that is in disrepair due to the fact that there never seems to be enough money to pay for its upkeep. Ironically, the state legislature can find plenty of money from the confiscatory state income tax system for social programs, hospital services for illegal aliens, and unbeliably generous pensions for public union members.
6) Top-heavy school systems chock full of politically correct agenda pushers, who empower clock watchers and discourage educators with a real vocation and talent to teach.
Hillary Clinton won upstate NY by promising to create jobs and revitalize the area. — Wonder why that was left out?
Be fair. Even the NYT can’t be expected to take campaign promises seriously.
My wife and I (both in our 20′s) left the Poughkeepsie area about four months ago due to the high cost-of-living, low number of job opportunities, and poor weather. We found jobs that paid better in a place that had lower taxes (property and income) with lower cost-of-living (lower gas prices, lower utility costs, etc.) and better weather. We now live in Phoenix, where although the temperature can get above 100 degrees for about four months of the year it’s not humid and we don’t have to worry about 2 feet of snow each year (and we still have ski resorts within 2 hours drive) and the winter time weather is absolutely the best in the country. So, I wouldn’t go back to upstate NY, except maybe for a 1-week vacation in the summer near Lake George or the Hudson Valley. To convince me to go back, NY is going to have to lower their taxes and attract businesses to cities such as Poughkeepsie, Syracuse, Rochester, Albany, etc. Oh, and get rid of those damn toll roads as well…I haven’t paid a toll in the past four months here in Arizona.
When I left Chicago after graduation, NY didn’t even come up as a possibility.
For a moment, forget all the negative stuff everyone else has said. Can you think of a good reason for a broke, starting out, just graduated college student to go to NY?
Just tried to use trackbacks & I’m getting a page not found error.
I grew up in rural Upstate NY and have lived in Rochester or nearby now for over 20 years. It’s a wonderful area in a lot of ways but the politicians are stunning in their egotism and idiocy. Their latest debacle-in-the-making is a $230 million “Renaissance Square” pork project (a performing arts center tied to an underground bus terminal, cuz that way it qualifies for transportation bill money, aren’t we clever?) The idea that they’d consider this thing at a time when they’re also readying to raise our taxes is mind-boggling . . .
I recall reading an old time Arab historian’s summary of the history of the Arab world.
A nomadic tribe would conqueror a sedentary society which had become enfeebled by the taxes of the ruling class. At first, the people were pleased, because the nomadic overlords had simple needs and taxes were kept low. But, overtime, the new overlords developed more expensive tastes and developed a larger, more expensive, and ever more rapacious government. Then, the cycle would repeat.
Imagine if upstate got invaded by an Army from some neigboring state with a growing population and no business regulations. No contest.
BTW. keep NY state in mind the next time the teacher’s union says we need higher taxes to pay teachers more because an educated workforce is essential for economic growth.
Low taxes are essential for growth. But, what did teachers ever really know about the real world?
My teacher relatives in NY have fine pensions.
To anyone thinking about moving to Florida, don’t. We have hurricanes here all the time. Forty or so every year. And bugs. BIG BUGS. sNAkES and gators, too. Those pretty pictures you see of beaches filled with happy people? The shots were taken just before the sharks came up on land and ate ‘em all. So don’t come to Florida.
(Hubby and I moved from Long Island to Florida as newly weds in the mid-70s. Our families said we were nuts. Now, most of them have followed. And their friends, too. :sigh:)
I lived five years of my mid-30s in Central New York. Stop anyone on the street and they will tell you young people leave because there are few professional opportunities.
I grew up in Florida, so I also found the tax scheme absolutely ridiculous. The state took 9% of my income off the top and local govt. taxes forced me to pay 5% of the value of my house every year.
It has been said now for over a decade, “New York State’s biggest export is well educated people.”
I don’t believe there is any one thing that anyone posting here can point to and say, “This is the reason people are leaving!” There is a feedback loop at play here which started decades ago and may not have an easy solution.
I grew up in Niagara Falls and Buffalo during the late ’60s and ’70s. Western New York, like a lot of New York state was once an Industrial heaven. Does anyone remember, oh about 1973-ish, various publications listing Rochester, NY as the best place to live in the United States? The boom of Western New York in particular dates back to the early 1900s when the power station of Niagara, added to the major shipping port that was Buffalo at the end of the still-used Erie Canal, made for an industrialist’s dream. That legacy provided a wonderful reservoir of resources to utilize for the post-war Industrial boom when cars, steel and chemicals were in high demand and the workers needed to create these products were in short supply–except for the hoards of children-now-adults of WNY’s early Industrial era. (Does anyone remember the fact that Castro had one or more of those Soviet missles pointed square at us? Do we remember why?)
That was then, and this is now. Unfortunately, the skills that “made” Western New York were as location-fungible as the knowledge to make power, and the knowledge to perform more work and produce more products with less power than the inefficient machinery of the early- and mid-20th century. In my childhood the factories and steel mills began closing and displaced older workers were taking The Plunge down Niagara Falls on live television. That was an amazingly depressing time for us all, and the impact of Blue Collar Death probably did more to define who children of that era like myself have become today than almost any other social phenomenon (I am sure this also helped shape good old Timothy McVeigh, who grew up a few towns over). In childhood Niagara Falls, a favorite topic of conversation amongst the adults was “the great places to move to.” I remember that Seattle was favored for those who wanted to work on airplanes (e.g., ex-Bell Aerospace engineers skipping over to Boeing). I remember also that many also favored Pheonix and Las Vegas. (In fact, to this day, every summer a big picnic is held in Las Vegas for Niagara Falls expats who currently live there–many in my family have been amongst them.) As you can see I grew up with the idea that everyone was going to move out. “Where are you going after you graduate?” was a hot question that no one thought twice of asking. It was what it was. Unfortunately the exodus of my parents generation looking for work, and the exodus of my generation which saw moving simply as a right of passage, probably helped create a feedback loop that may take generations to fix. Not to sound stuck on myself or anything, but since none of us live there anymore why should anyone else move in? The problem is that people go where other people are. I am in Seattle these days because a friend of mine talked me in to joining him at Microsoft. Though I don’t work at Microsoft anymore (another story for another day), I remain here because a lot of bright and talented people surround me, which makes for an exciting place to implement a career (I found Boston to be a similar place–exciting because of the people there). Like randomly wondering ants who are attracted to the pheromones of other ants who had previously wondered about the same location, the gathering of working-age humans is one of those “network” problems which place greater value on locations which other working-age humans place great value. Unlike the stock market however, these boom and bust cycles run their course throughout the time span of generations, not minutes. This scenario is also playing itself out in other old industrial regions like Detroit, Pittsburg and even Chicago.
The good news is that land is cheap in these old industrial regions, and there is also something to be said about the previous comment regarding what the region might be like during Global Warming winters (though the summers would probably continue to be Gawd Awfully hot and all-too-humid). Perhaps the pendulum will swing back one day once technology brings the cost of physical infrastructure reclamation down to such a low cost that places like Western New York (especially Niagara Falls) can shed their industrial legacy and become the beautiful locations they were before the twentieth century hub-bub. I personally dream of a day when nanotechnology can reclaim all of the imported waste that greets visitors to the city of Niagara who can’t see the rising mist because the snow-capped peaks of what locals like to call “Mount Saint Cecos” dominates the landscape instead. At some point, like all other cities, Seattle will become boring and fall out of fashion. When that happens what will be the “new frontier” that the youth of that time will want to go to, remake, and call their own?
Gary,
Don’t be silly. When the government contracts with a private-sector firm to build a building or a highway, or to take care of transport in Iraq, the jobs are private-sector jobs. Yet they are also jobs paid for by the government with taxpayer money e.g., Halliburton, KB&R, Blackwater, etc.
Some of the stats are available at the Labor Department Website, including total private-sector jobs 01/2001 = 111,622,000 AND in 12/2005 = 112,580,000 And then to 6/2006 it goes up to 113,629,000 for a NET of just over 2 million. First page to look at is this one … ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.compaes.txt
Now as to the number of private-sector jobs “created” by government, the derivation is more complex. Various reports by the Defense Department most importantly, and by the OMB and by the Congressional Research Service discuss personnel and contract-workers. The Economic Policy Institute website publishes a report which treats this in summary fashion, but their data is right out of government reports. Add it up — the Bush Administration has witnessed the size of government private sector jobs INCREASING FASTER than private sector jobs in the aggregate.
And if you don’t think the Republican regime based so stongly in the South and midwest hasn’t been steering the spigot of those contracts to their base (and NOT to NY!) I’ve got a bridge you could have for a song!
AND consider also that were it not for the “WAR” and the government spending associated with it, the jobs picture would reveal the catastrophic Bush economic management for the screwed-up political monkeyshines it is!
Dave,
Your “ad” for Fulton County is hilarious. And other posters as well. Thanks for the laughs.
I can’t wait till states start putting out real ads for those of us not rich/poor enough to live in the socialist paradises above.
It is easy to blame the local politicians in the case of Western New York Brain Drain but, really, I would not like to have their jobs because I don’t think there is much they can do about this problem in the short, or even medium term. It is easy to believe that everything is screwed up back at home because crooked politicians are stealing all of the money, but in my opinion that us just indulgent fantasy. Besides, I would be willing to bet that the politicians who reigned during the economic hey day of the era were far more crooked than the unfortunate souls who occupy their positions today. If there is corruption in places like Western New York these days, it is probably because those running the show are simply bored. There certainly isn’t as much money floating around today as there was in years past, hence not as much money to make off of “corruption.” Furthermore, I also believe that much of what looks like corruption today may just be symptoms of the incompetance of those who take on public service jobs that no one else in their right mind would want. (Would only a fool believe they can fix the problems of the region?) Those of us from Niagara Falls and Buffalo know pretty damned well of the town’s organized crime infiltration of previous eras (I personally have a particular relative in mind when I speak of this) and none of what goes on today has the same “feel.”
Before I moved from the region in the 1990s, I did have my own business and did try my best to grow. My biggest problem was not regulation as much as the fact that no one was interested in making any kind of interesting deal to do interesting things. No one cared, for instance, to make the region more “tech friendly.” No one understood what the future was going to look like and what opportunities for fame and fortune existed for the picking. I can tell you stories of the countless opportunitues of the 1990s that went unclaimed in the region, not because of the lack of specific knowledge or lack of capital, but because investors just didn’t care what anyone had to say. In Western New York I could not get anyone with investment money interested in anything that would actually make them more money. Outside of the region, on the other hand, what I say and do has had fertile ground to live and grow. Of all the things that hampered my ability to make a business work in Western New York, I would say that culture was by far the biggest factor of them all.
Those people “who got it” had long ago moved to Pheonix, Las Vegas, Seattle and Raliegh, and so have I.
oldradus, though much of the private sector jobs today are the domino-chain of results that follow from government spending on the war, history shows that this is not a bad thing. A lot of this government money comes in the form of research and development, the results of which will drive true value-add private sector jobs for decades to come. Though we are ratcheting up the deficit today as a result of this spending, our international creditors know damned well that this capital will be paid back in spades with the production that will follow.
The United States, as an aggregate whole, is still a great place to invest your money with.
As an incidental, what sane person would try to do business in the jursidiction of Eliot Spitzer?
Due to the poisoned cultural legacy of the region, I am afraid that the best solution for the New York State problem is to keep draining the region of life until its very desolation becomes fertile ground for the hopes and dreams of a new generation of energetic, promising young souls to thrive.
Sounds crass, no? Talk to anyone born and raised there and this concept will generate looks of resignation and cautious nods of agreement.
“I’m afraid you’re right about that.”
oldradus, you’re not even trying to be honest. You cherry-picked January 2001 as the starting point for your jobs count? You did that for a reason; that’s disengenuous at best.
I guess it’ll come as a total surprise to you to learn that THAT was the very peak employment moment in a multi-year stock market/tech/employment bubble that lead to obviously-unsustainably low unemplyment in a “Clinton economy” loaded with vapor jobs (Dr. Koop.com, anyone? Global Crossing? Enron? Pets.com? Those jobs should never have existed, but they sure made the stats look good for awhile).
I guess you’ve forgotten that shortly thereafter came a bear market and recession, exacerbated by the 9-11 attacks, that saw unemployment climb by about 2 points or more.
Why don’t you start you employment-count at, say, November 2002? I wonder what job creation would look like from that point? That wouldn’t fit your pre-conceptions would it?
Recessions, bubbles, and corrections occasionally happen. This economy has adjusted fantastically, showing incredible strength and resilience, creating enormous numbers of jobs since things bottomed out.
Meanwhile, my company is trying to hire (having no relation to government spending) and we’re having trouble filling the slots (this for essentially unskilled bachelor’s degree positions) — a lot of you are experiencing the same thing.
By the way, I am not trying to defend the actions of Those In Power in Western New York, or in the greater New York state today, but rather I am commenting on what I think is by far the largest contributor to the long-running economic depression of the region.
The Great New York State Depression, like all other economic depressions, is mostly the result of the dynamics of group psychology than it is about the state of affairs of economic “fundamentals.”
Cherry Picked??? (Where did that come from? Guilty Conscience?) Huh?! From the START of the Bush Administration to now. Anything else would be cherry picking.
My bona fides: I lived in Central NY from 1985-98. I left for a job — but hoped to return. Eventually I became settled in the midwest. The job-market for my expertise sucks everywhere — but I would love to return to the “high-tax” northeeast — including NY.
Taxes. I’m out of here as soon as I retire, never to return. I grew up in Niagara Falls, (pop 100,000 in the 1950′s and 1960s, half that today), spent most of the 70′s in Japan, came back to Syracuse and have watched upstate slowly wither and die.
Winters are not such a big deal. A little too long, but I’m at work anyway, so not a huge deal.
My wife and I must be rich, because we are paying over $1000/month in State income tax and property taxes alone. That is more than my mortgage, or more than payments on the student loans to educate 3 kids.
Somebody alluded earlier to a tax on people leaving the state. It was tried (earlier) – NY had the idea that since you earned your pension here, they were entitled to keep taxng you, even after you left. The Supreme Court killed that idea…
I’m partial to the San Antonio area, but I will definitely be leaving when I can. For any disbelievers, which state has more in medicare(medicaid?) fraud than any other state spends in medicare? Which state shifts a large protion of that to the counties, driving up property taxes. Which state are we talking about here?
Initiative, referendum, and recall? Not in NY. Look at the NY Legislature. Highest paid in the nation, yet the Senate and Assembly leader control everything. It’s not going to improve, so I’m going to leave.
red river wrote:
“Move to Texas. Have a baby. Shop at Costco. Vote for Bush.”
Sure, why not add this to it: “Stop reading books. Watch ‘American Idol.’ Eat a lot of crap. Be a smug asshole.”
Nicole, re corruption, I agree, there’s no evidence of overt corruption — pols skimming public money or anything of that sort. But do our local & state politicians really sit down every day and ask themselves what’s best for the people they serve? I doubt it. They ask what is best for their careers. To me, that counts as corruption, too.
Your comments have been excellent, appreciating them very much. I love this state. I’m sorry to think that it’s in decline.
There’s one type of business doing very well in Central New York. On State Route 12B, outside Deansboro (Oneida County), a Mennonite family of seven plus one hired hand (also a Mennonite) run a large, prosperous dairy farm producing “organic” milk.
So far as I can tell, their social interactions are limited to necessary business transactions with the locals. Otherwise, it’s church services with other Mennonites.
The arrangement seems to work well for them. So living a good, satisfying life is not impossible in upstate NY.
I think one of the overlooked factors in the number of college grads leaving NY state, is the amount of them that were from out of state to begin with. I left Rochester myself, as did virtually everyone I knew in school.
It’s freakin’ cold, there isn’t much outside of the city itself, inside the city there is rampant crime and dumbassery, and worst of all it is, after all, in NY state, where you have plenty of stupid laws and ridiculous taxes. Why the hell would we stay?
One friend got the hell out of Dodge 1 class short of his master’s; he told me he couldn’t take it anymore there. (he went to Vegas) Several more moved to Atlanta and all ran into one another in short order, much to their amusement. New Hampshire also seemed to be pretty popular.
They want us to stay in NY? The solution is easy: Make New York Not Suck.
(I lived and worked there for almost 3 years, and I never got NY residency either)
25 years ago, New York used to be 41 electoral votes. Now it is just 31.
Texas used to be just 26 electoral votes, now it is 34.
Florida used to be just 16, now it is 27.
More on the twisted contradictions of the leftist mind.
A few years ago I retired from the miltary after 26 1/2 years. After assignments in Boston and DC, I was ready for a place I could afford to live. Based on my assigments around the country, I knew there were places where my GI retirement would cover my basic living expenses.
I wound up in Alabama. We had a new house built on a handshake from the builder — no paperwork. It’s not large (no kids), but it’s well outside the nearest city, with trees screening out the neghbors behind us. Since we bought the house six years ago, we have twice bought the mortgage down. I’m now paying about $700/month for a first-rate, 1800 square foot house with a two car garage (real big, super-fancy houses can be had for under $200k!). My GI retiree pay more than covers my basic living expenses. And I have a new full-time job. My total income is just under $120K. My state income taxes were an eye-watering $375 last year, because federal pensions are tax-free (there are five other states that don’t tax military pensions). My wife and I have lots of spendable income. Say what you want about Alabama, but the folks down here are very friendly.
Hyundai just built a new car plant just down the road; there’s a new Mercedes plant outside Tuscaloosa. This place is GROWING.
I would never go back to the Northeast, except to turn the lights out. Absolutely HATED Boston and DC. As for cold weather being a negative factor, I’d move back to Montana (my first assignment) in a heartbeat, if I could get a job I could love.
It is the taxes – I would never move there.
One of my customers in upstate new york
is paying $45.00/$1,000.00 property tax,
how could you survive a tax rate like that.
Essex and Hamilton counties in NYS are now categorized as “frontier” by frontierus.org (traditionally that’s 6 people or less per square mile). When you’ve emptied out that badly, you have a real problem, a problem that the NYS government seems incapable of dealing with after botching the job for decades. A legislature that incompetent won’t be content until it ruins the NYC area as well. I won’t go back.
One of the major problems with upstate New York is the simple fact that it contains less than 50 percent of the state’s population, and far too many of the elected downstate reps could not give a damn about what goes on up there. They are focused on New York City and it’s five main commuter counties, and if there is any interest at all paid to the 52 other counties upstate, it’s only to toss them a few bones during election years in hopes they can scrounge up enough votes to win the upcoming races.
To those pols, a crisis is not a crisis unless it’s a crisis that affects the NYC metro area, and as long as the city is (relatively) fat and happy, with expanding population and revenues as is the case today, they’re not going to care if Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, the Southern Tier or the North Country are suffering (were it not for the annual state Democratic Party conventions, I doubt Sheldon Silver would know there was any part of New York State more than 15 miles west of the Hudson River). And since the downstate group has enough votes in the State Legislature to force policy, the economic condition upstate is caught in a downward spiral, losing young workers who vote, and then not having enough voters to improve their own situations through policy changes in Albany.
Five years ago, a commissioned study suggested that upstate NY had to have different business regulations than downstate to compete with the rest of the rust-belt state economies (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin). The study was submitted to the state legislature. As expected, each of the bills supporting such a move died in committee.
The best fix for NY would be for a statewide referendum to separate the state into two new states. Upstate NY and NYC Metro.
Secondly, the people need to rise up and take control of the legislature from the head of the state senate and legislature.
Only then will something be done to slow the youth-drain. To survive, NY has to lower taxes (property, income, sales, electricity), remove costs due to excessive regulations, get out of the way of new business opportunities, and stop the insanity of a 3-headed government.
I don’t see these things happening anytime soon. That is too bad.
Hmm…I thought George Pataki got elected on promises to bring jobs to upstate NY. And to end the secretive “three men in a room” budget process. And to get the budget in on time.
But it can’t be his fault, because he’s a Republican. We know they can do no wrong.
Having grown up in Syracuse, let me offer my perspective. Of my brothers and sisters, 3 out of the 4 of us have left the state. Everyone I knew in HS who went on to college left the state to find work. When I go back to visit my parents, it is apparent that the only people left are retirees, and the changes in the economy are related to providing health care and other services for the elderly. As others have mentioned, it has been like this for decades, and no signs of change are in place.
Weather DOES play a factor in this, although it is not the primary one. Syracuse averages 10 feet of snow per year, there is no place in the Northeast that comes close to that. I live in NH and work in Boston and can attest to that. To say that doesn’t discourage people from moving there while at the same time talking about people moving to the South because of the climate is absurd.
The primary reason for moving has been the decline of traditional industry, resulting in a reduced tax base but with no attempt to recruit new businesses to replace them, instead taxes were raised to compensate, further driving out business. Corruption is present – anyone remember Lee Alexander? but is not a large factor. Housing prices are actually quite low now, you can buy a nice house for 100K in Syracuse that would cost you 300K or more in NH and 400+ in MA, but you would be unemployed.
If you compare what a high-cost state like MA has done versus NY you see the difference. Someone in MA saw the changing economy and worked to create an information/education based economy using the network of universities. NYS just raised taxes and watched the businesses leave.
The weather doesn’t help, and the taxes don’t help, but John touches on the crux of the problem – the state is too “bottom-heavy”, in that like 75% of the people live south of the Tappan Zee Bridge. Nobody here cares what’s going on in Syracuse, because Syracuse may as well be Ohio.
My solution? Secession. Once Upstate New York is its own state, it can form an identity distinct from New York City, and they can solve their own problems free from NYC’s shadow.
The Faz said: “Someone in MA saw the changing economy and worked to create an information/education based economy using the network of universities.”
Not quite. The tech boom that keeps MA alive was driven by the Air Force’s decision in the mid-70′s to consolidate its command and control (C2) development and acquisition at Hanscom AFB near Lexington. The defense industries followed the dollars and set up shop. MIT jumped on board and founded the MITRE Corporation to leverage those defense dollars.
The local pols won’t admit that it wasn’t anything they consciously did that triggered MA’s tech boomlet. It was that nasty ol’ military-industrial complex at work.
Left rochester in 1985 and came back,for wife’s parents, in 2001…Big mistake. In 5 years the taxes on a 280K home went frome 6500 to over 10K.
The area is a black hole sucking the life, and savings, out of those foolish people who worked and save their money.
It the most incredimal mixture of incompetent and indifferent politicians (Clinton/Schumer) at every level, Greedy Teachers Uniion/Educational system screaming for more money and larger sports budgets, welfare/entitilement programs providing for the illegals, relocated Katrina victims?, carte blanche for those who avoid work/responsibility for themselves/etc, along with extremely generous state pensions for all state workers and, of course, medicare. All of the above paid for, not by the poor or rich, by the middle clas slugs who see their pensions & benefits (if they have any) decline each year while their out of pockect expense increases.
Those with children cost more than they pay into the system leaving only the retirees/childless people to be the cash cows for a system that is so broken that even bankruptcy (like Buffalo) will not stop the madness.And you know what happens to cows aftere they no longer provide milk.
I believe that New York, specifically and the Northeast,in general, are to be avoid by anyone who has savings, is looking for work, or is just looking for a decent place to live. New York has become the home of the incompetent, the corruptable/corrupted, those not burdened with honor, integrity, a work ethic, or those who do not believe in taking responsibility for their actions.. a Liberal left platform if ever there was one.
All the things that made this country great are slowly, methodically being eliminated with no chance of survival.
Signs should be posted at the borders as people enter NYS with the saying “all who enter here abandon all hope!
I grew up in upstate New York outside Schenectady. In 1975, New York City declared bankruptcy. There was talk at that time of splitting the state of New York, though it never converted into genuine political action. I still believe it should–I would split the state at the north boundary of Westchester and Rockland counties.
(While at it, I also advocate splitting California along the north sides of San Luis Obispo, Kern and San Bernardino counties.)
I grew up in Schenectady. When I retired from the Air Force in 2003, we decided to move back to Colorado and raise our 7-year-old son here. The job market in upstate NY wasn’t too great, and G.E. is pretty much shutting down and moving to North Carolina. The NY property taxes are atrocious. I currently pay about $1400 a year. A comparable house we looked at in Guilderland (just west of Albany) was estimated at $8000 a year. No thanks.
Joe Vas,
You’re painting with a pretty wide brush as there are lot of folks here that are trying to change things but these things come slow anywhere but especially in NYS.
On the ‘gloom’ factor mentioned earlier by others that-is-so-true and it drives me nuts although I do agree that the state has to bottom out before there will be any true change in the gov’t.
In the meantime I spent last weekend camping on a L.Ontario beach and it was beautiful, very much like the ocean. So you get a little back I guess.
Why hasn’t NY passed a Prop 13 type bill to lower property taxes?
Let’s see if we can enumerate any pluses of developing a business in New York state, especially along the I-90 corridor:
* Lovely natural surroundings (Niagara, the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, Letchworth, and so on)
* Universities brimming with talent (Cornell, SUNY in general, especially Buffalo for medicine)
* Access to two major trucking corridors (I-90/I-87)
* Low, low, LOW property prices!!!
* Three locations with access to Canada (Watertown, Buffalo, Niagara)
* Fresh water shipping ports/access to the Great Lakes (a long time historical plus)
* Great land to build on (especially with some of the dolemite foundations around Niagara and Buffalo–caveat, I have never actually developed in New York state before so I may not be accurate in my off-the-cuff assessment). If anything, the land is well-understood (this compares to never-before developed desert sand).
* Of course, access to NYC and all that entails.
You might be thinking, “What’s there not to love?” I can tell you from my short experience in commercial real estate development that taxes are not the only issue with investors, as time-completion and other project risk factors also play an important part in go/no-go decisions.
Development is booming in Las Vegas because of the low regulatory burden supported by the state of Nevada. The problem with regulation is that it can not only increase the cost of development but it can threaten to completely derail a project all together. Developing a large business is a matter of psychology as much as it is about money, especially when multiple investors are involved. For instance if a minor investor E pulls out then the entire project may suddenly find itself short of some critical piece of funding hence flushing the entire dealthosethe reasons listed below:
* Changes in tax structure, which can increase future operating costs as well as introduce uncertainty into the future of the business (e.g., “What will they do to us next, after promising stability the first time?”)
* Overly strict environmental enforcement, or impromtu changes to environmental enforcement may increase the amount of time necessary to complete a project. During construction and prior to the sale of the property to the new owner, the developer assumes the cost of that development through a strict (and rather hefty) loan (unless the developer is big enough to fund the project themselves). Increasing time-to-sale introduces not only increased interest-related costs to the developer, but also introduces the possibility that they can get into Dutch with the lending institution itself hence endangering future project loans. Nothing is worse, for instance, than finding out that your development is on permanent hold because you would be endangering some odd species of gigantic earthworm.
* High engineering costs, the human cost of which can also be driven by time-related risk factors.
* Politics in general, which can cause developers to spend too much time making nicey-nice with egos and not spend enough time with their architects, engineers and builders (Nevada is nice in that things are more likely to “just happen” — no fuss, no muss)
I am sure I can come up with more but I am getting tired and you probably get the point. Amongst the many questions one must ask about the future of New York state is what is the state, regional and local governments are doing to reduce the risk factors they can control? Setting aside the governance issue, one also has to ask what local entrepreneurs and residents are doing to improve the psychological outlook for development in the state? Remember what I said about new business development being also an exercise in human psychology. If no one thinks that a business will be appreciated in some special manner, why should anyone devote a number of years of their lives to the care and feeding of an infant business in that region? In other words don’t lay all of your frustrations at the doorstep of government, because it is the environment as a whole which will determine success. Like many other market-driven situations, nothing breeds success like success and nothing fuels failure like failure.
I agree with PJ in that, ultimately, New York state may have to bottom out before investors can become convinced of the bargain that New York state can be.
> I also advocate splitting California along the north sides of San Luis Obispo, Kern and San Bernardino counties.
The natural dividing lines in CA run north-south, not east-west. (The SF Bay area has much more in common with LA than it does with Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, Bakersfield, etc.) The relevant dividing line should hit the Pacific just above Marin county.