From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Subject: Re: Bulger
Organization: The World
	<BZS.93Jan6181957@world.std.com>
	<1993Jan10.230224.13553@athena.mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 04:17:52 GMT


John Carr responding to me...

>>Meanwhile, Flynn is pushing for a city sales tax for Boston, not that
>>I find that the worst idea in the world.
>
>>I know I know, it'll drive business out, it hits the poor the
>>hardest, etc etc etc, I dunno, NYC has had a city sales tax for around
>>30 years and I don't remember it driving them to rack and ruin.
>
>Maybe we have different standards, but I wouldn't point at NYC as an
>example of a healthy city.

Well, there's a bit of a leap from "not rack and ruin" to "healthy",
I chose my words carefully.

>Costs are high.  One reason there are a lot of high-paying jobs in the
>city is so employees can afford to live there.  My sister is in law
>school in NYC.  Once she starts working she will lose 40% of her income
>to taxes, and have a much higher cost of living than I do.

Yeah, ok, no disagreement, sounds like that works out ok. I haven't
run into too many starving NYC lawyers lately ("will litigate for
food".)

>Crime rates are high.  This was probably true before the city sales tax,
>but has the extra tax revenue helped?  Or did it all go to pay inflated
>union wages?

Inflated union wages? Do you voluntarily take less than you can get at
a particular job very often? Would you refuse a raise if MIT offered
it to you because you felt tuition was too high already? C'mon. Union
bashing is class-ism at its worst, whether I am pleased with it or not
it's funny how easily we bash the working guy for driving a hard
bargain as if it were some sort of moral turpitude, while the lawyer
or businessperson who does it is just merely smart.

Actually, I don't know that crime rates PER CAPITA are all that high
in NYC these days. It's been pretty low on violent crimes for years,
relative to other comparable cities (DC, Detroit, Phila, etc.), not
wonderful, but barely hanging in the top ten of that dubious list.

WAIT -- I have here in my possession, ladies and gentlemen, a copy of
none other than (what's the cover say lessee...) The 1992 Information
Please Almanac. And on Page 892 there is a table of crime rates by
city by crime. Lessee what all these little numbers are trying to
say...

Ok, this is for 1988, offenses known to the police per 100,000.

I can't type this all in, hmm, the crimes are: Murder, forcible rape,
robbery, aggravated assault, (total violent crime), Burglary/B&E,
Larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, (total property crimes), (total
all crimes.)

Let me see here...

On total/violent: NYC was second behind Detroit, but the whole top of
the list is pretty tightly clustered between Detroit, NY, Dallas (!),
Baltimore and LA, all around 2,000 (per 100K pop.)

On total/property: Wow, Dallas and San Antonio are out of sight, off
the chart, with 14,000 and 11,000 (per 100K pop) respectively. NYC is
eighth (7,562), behind Phoenix (8,259) and about tied with San
Francisco (7,479), damn, NYC is lower than Memphis, TN (7,810)!

So, basically, as long as you're alive you're probably ok in NYC, and
if you're not, if you get killed, who cares if they steal your car,
right? And I guarantee if that happens they'll stop bugging you
(personally anyhow) for taxes, it's a sure thing.

(um, :-)

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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