Wendell Cox ponders the question in . The short answer: very far, indeed, especially in markets where building is stringently regulated. Read More
Blog
State revenues could drop $3.5 billion over the next fiscal year as a result of the continuing financial crisis, according to a from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. DiNapoli ends his report on what apparently is intended to be an upbeat note: Read More
The Post's Fred Dicker today that Paterson administration budget officials now believe New York State's 2008-09 budget gap will be in the neighborhood of $7 billion, up from a projected $5.5 billion in the wake of the Legislature's August s Read More
The story from today’s papers with the biggest potential long-term impact on New York’s economy doesn’t even contain the words “New York.” That’s Gillian Tett’s FT piece on global investors’ assessment of the credit of the United States of America. Read More
Despite the challenge of teaching in an urban school district, Buffalo teachers don’t have to wear their stress on their faces. Their new health benefit package covers cosmetic surgery, courtesy of taxpayers. Read More
While he carefully avoids a flat rejection of the idea, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has been expressing doubts about Governor Eliot Spitzer’s proposal for a cap on school property taxes. Read More
Governor Spitzer's first Executive Budget would raise state spending by up to three times the projected rate of inflation in the fiscal year that begins April 1. Read More
News coverage of Gov. Eliot Spitzer's first State of the State message invariably highlighted his proposal for what has been widely billed as a $6 billion property tax reduction. . . Read More
New York City's current budget is an object lesson in why too much money is just as serious a problem as too little. New York ended the last fiscal year with $3.8 billion more than it expected to spend. . . but while taxpayers historically have borne tax-rate hikes to fund the city's predictable cyclical deficits, they will not see tax cuts due to the current record surplus, unless Mayor Bloomberg takes advantage of this temporary boom time. . . Read More
New York's newly adopted city budget for fiscal 2006 calls for a 7.5 percent spending increase, well above the rate of inflation or growth in the city's economy. Under the four municipal budgets adopted since Michael Bloomberg became mayor in 2002, city spending has risen at more than twice the inflation rate. Relative to New Yorkers' personal income, city operating expenditures in the year ahead will be significantly higher than the average during Rudolph Giuliani's tenure in the mayor's office. Read More
Seemingly oblivious to the already high and rising cost of taxpayer-funded public pensions in New York, state lawmakers this year passed at least 36 measures that would expand pension benefits for groups of public workers. Read More
The New York Stock Exchange's proposed merger with a Paris-based company operating four electronic stock exchanges in Europe could be a sign of trouble for the economic engine of the Empire State. Read More