[Magdalen] immigration / migrant situation --->Re: Professionalpanhandlers; was Loaned out.

[Jim Guthrie]

>That shows a metrocentric view of the State.  Last time I checked New York 
>State reaches up to the Great Lakes.  I haven't checked property prices but I 
>imagine there are lots of areas where life is cheaper than in Manhattan.

First of all, one has to start with the state tax system: for individuals, New 
York State was 42nd LOWEST in the United States. That's because (per idiotic 
Conservative ideology) local services and attendant taxation are left to 
counties and local cities and communities.

The lowest levels of government-- school districts, fire districts, library 
districts and the like all have their own tax levies, along with incorporated 
villages, townships and Second- and Third- class cities -- all buried as line 
items on the yearly property tax bill sent by the county ( or First Class City, 
which I think NYC and maybe Buffalo are the only one(s).

County taxes include sales tax as a major driver, with lesser assessments on 
property. NY State Sales tax is 4.25% last I checked -- but counties (and 
cities) often double that -- or even more.

One of the traditional election scams in upstate New York is "running against 
New York City and their socialist hospitals and welfare queens in pink Cadillacs 
" etc. etc. etc. "Taxing us poor noble farmers to death." There's even a group 
wanting to create a state of "Ne Amsterdam" upstate so they "dpn;t have to 
subsidize those immigrants and blacks and the rest in NY City."

Estimates say that without NYC's share of state taxes, their taxes would rise by 
42% if they managed to do such a ting.

Part of the scam was to isolate Medicaid expense at the county level, rather 
than statewide. The result has been county taxes so high and getting higher as 
those "poor farmers" having transferred property to their kids long before, end 
up in nursing homes at Medicaid's expense --  read: Local Counties. And in much 
of upstate NY (north and west of Albany) counties have had to raise taxes so 
high that even the kids owning the land are abandoning it. So are a lot of other 
people and businesses that can’t take the clear results of who/what they voted 
for.

And there appears to be little chance of fixing it, though if the New Amsterdam 
people could get their way, it would be a huge boon to NY City!

As it turns out, the lowest property tax burden is in New York City, where the 
tax is structured so as to preserve as much as the middle class as possible.

Those seniors moving to Manhattan co-ops find their property taxes are often 
lower than in Florida or Arizona! (I paid $5800 this year in Scranton, vs $4400 
in NY City the year  before).