Failed Government Schools | More Liberty

New York spends $6,400 (125%) more per person than Florida – and for what?

A Tale of Two States: New York and Florida

By: George Noga – March 26, 2023

Refugees are fleeing en masse from NY to FL, and it is easy to see why. The mystery is why everyone doesn’t. Let’s begin with some numbers which reveal much (but definitely not all) of the calculus for bolting from NY. A resident of Miami pays no (as in zip, zero, nada) state or local income tax, while denizens of the big apple pay 14.8%. New Yorkers pay 8.875% in sales tax versus 6% in Miami. Florida’s constitution caps residential real estate taxes which generally hover around only 1% of value.

The NY budget calls for spending $227 billion ($11,500 per resident); the FL budget contains spending of $115 billion ($5,100 per capita). NY spends twice as much as FL even though FL has 2.5 million more people. Florida’s economy is growing at twice the rate of NY and its unemployment rate is half that of NY. Estate taxes in NY are 16%, while FL has no state inheritance or estate tax. And a moving van costs 500% more in NY. But there is much more to the story than is revealed by the numbers alone.

New York is where safety, civility, culture and liberty go to die.

Paying double in taxes might be okay if NY was a Garden of Eden and its sky-high taxes resulted in la dolce vita for its inhabitants. However, New York has toxic governance based on identity politics, Kafkaesque regulation, stratospheric living costs, mandatory unionization and crumbling infrastructure. Its failed government schools are run by unions and are petri dishes for dysfunction and social pathologies. Crime is rampant while gun control is uber-strict. There is massive public debt, unfunded liabilities and tanking credit ratings. NY bollixed the pandemic response and, in obeisance to teachers’ unions, shuttered schools for years causing irreparable harm.

New York is a woke sanctuary state that tolerates homelessness, open drug use and human filth. NY decriminalizes arson, looting and shoplifting, while defunding police and eliminating cash bail. NY pits people against each other based on race, income, age, ethnicity and gender. NY’s stagnating economy hemorrhages its most productive citizens. NY schools teach the 1619 Project, CRT and encourage young children to question their gender without parental involvement. Housing is scarce, dilapidated and costly with rent control and eviction bans. Environmentalism run amok doubles the cost of energy. New York is where safety, civility, culture and liberty go to die.

Each and every one of the horrors of life in New York listed above is non-existent in the free state of Florida. Will the last person to leave NY kindly turn off the lights?

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More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us

America is facing economic stagnation, failed schools, a nuclear Iran and is fighting global Islamic terrorism. Progressives are fighting for men to use the ladies’ restroom.

Fake Solutions to Fake Problems

By: George Noga – October 2, 2016

As we approach the election, we are bombarded from the progressive side with a panoply of phony issues to which they proffer equally phony solutions. They don’t have real solutions to real problems; all they can offer is maskirovka and rope-a-dope.

The most serious issues America faces are: weak economic growth with income stagnation, radical Islamic terrorism, Iran as a nuclear threshold state, chronic debt and deficits approaching critical mass, and failed government schools. Progressives don’t want to discuss any of these issues; instead, they talk of climate change, gun control, a war on women, transgender restrooms, and environmentalism – all phantom issues.

Climate change is fake because it is man-made in only an inconsequential way, if at all, as well documented in prior posts. It is a classic Baptists-bootleggers political coalition of true believers (environmentalists) and their fellow travelers (government) who stand to benefit. The latest fake solution is the climate deal signed earlier this year in Paris where politicians from 175 countries agreed to keep doing whatever they intended to do anyway and with no consequences for non compliance. In an ultimate irony, the fake climate deal to fight a fake enemy was signed in the same city where just a short while earlier a real enemy, Islamic terrorism, slaughtered 130 real people.

Gun control is progressives’ go-to issue. We published a series, Guns in America, available at http:\\www.mllg.us which proves to any scient person there is no positive correlation between guns and crime and there likely is a negative correlation, i.e. more guns equals less crime. We followed that up with a Harvard study showing social, cultural and economic factors (and not guns) are the determinants of violent crime.

Gun control is a phony issue for which progressives have proposed a long train of phony solutions. Not one proposed measure would have prevented any mass gun violence in America. Their most recent phony solution is the “no fly, no buy” proposal to ban gun sales to anyone on the no-fly watch list. This is a small and notoriously inaccurate list that excludes all recent terrorists; it would have no effect on terrorism.

A war on women and the campus rape culture likewise are imaginary issues. Duke, UVA and Harvard (The Hunting Ground) have been debunked. College campuses actually are safer for women than elsewhere. Women’s pay is equal to or higher than men’s when making proper adjustments for education, experience, danger, etc. Liberal solutions also are imaginary such as constant ongoing affirmative consent for sex. Progressives refuse to criticize the real war on women in Moslem countries, replete with, inter alia, genital mutilation, no driving, burkas and Sharia law. Go figure!

Transgenders constitute .00006 of the population, making this issue a tempest in a teapot. Progressives insist anyone who self identifies as any gender can use any public facility at anytime. They demand young girls accept showering with men and that they simply get over any discomfort. Yet, they dictate transgenders not be required to use facilities conforming to their biological gender because it may cause them discomfort.

Environmentalism is a totally ersatz issue. Every metric (100 of them) shows both human and environmental well being to be the best they have been in the past 50-75 years and getting better all the time. Their fake solution is to spend ever more and more money to eke out ever less and less imperceptible benefit and to elevate a tiny fish (delta smelt) over the well being of hundreds of thousands of real human beings.

Take the real issues identified in this post and contrast them with the phantom issues and solutions put forth by progressives. They use misdirection, smoke, mirrors, and rope-a-dope for emotional appeals to low information voters. They never address serious issues with serious solutions. They choose instead to fight for transgenders against young girls but not for all Americans against radical Islam and a nuclear Iran.

The next post in our 2016 election series addresses political correctness.