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Personally, I would like to see Upstate governmental entities consolidate or maybe even discontinued. For instance, the position of county executive is only about 4 decades old or so. School districts, police agencies and other special districts should look into consolidating.
NYC gets a good part of our hydro from Niagara Falls. I personally think we should charge them 3-4X as much for it. Dairy, farm produce, many small businesses, lots of tourism? If we were to chop off NY by extending the PA line east, I think NYC and the southern counties and LI would find life more expensive. Since many people can literally telecommute, living up in this part of the state is a lot cheaper.
NYC thinks we drain them, so it is all relevant.
Right, and a lot of the trade and travel from Canada through the crossing at Niagara Falls is due to New York City. A lot of dairies, farms, vineyards and such ship their food to NYC which has a strong demand for at least somewhat local produce. This all seems pretty stupid.
NYC isn't a "drain" on Upstate; but rather they simply have very conflicting interests. There are policies in place that create taxes and regulations that in a huge and dense city like NYC; are understandable and even necessary. However, they adversely effect the Upstate region. NYC area residents vote in NYC area politicians to hold state offices with Upstate getting little recognition. This also adversely effects Upstate.
I agree with you. NYC, Long Island should be a special admin district, like Washington DC. The only thing that is important is NYC can still attract businesses simply because it is NYC. They should do just fine by itself.
NY state can concentrate on what it does best. Wine, dairy, farms, tourism would probably flourish even more now that the lawmakers in Albany have nothing else to pander over.
Add the new growth industry in greek yogurt! NY milk for NY made yogurt near Batavia.As well as some large companies moving here for sheer cost effectiveness.
A few days of no traffic into NYC/LI after Sandy showed how vulnerable the city was for most everything. Here, I don't know about most of you, but we arem rural and we have a generator, minimum 2-3 weeks food ( can/dry) and a full freezer and even ( God forbid!) a well - which hasn't been used in years and is very hard water, but it is there. Oil lamps are our source of light in no electric situations. Septic as well - the well works on toilets. We made it thru the Blizzard of 77 and the October Surprise with no issues. I cannot say that occurs easily in NYC/LI.... I grew up there when it was a lot less populated and the east end of the island was still farms!
NYC isn't a "drain" on Upstate; but rather they simply have very conflicting interests. There are policies in place that create taxes and regulations that in a huge and dense city like NYC; are understandable and even necessary. However, they adversely effect the Upstate region. NYC area residents vote in NYC area politicians to hold state offices with Upstate getting little recognition. This also adversely effects Upstate.
This is true and why laws should be similar to how driver's licenses are administered in NYS.
NYC dominates policy in NY state. The city attracts businesses no matter how tax unfriendly it is to do business in NY because, hey it's New York City. The rest of the state is stuck with policies that hurt any place other than NYC and there's nothing we can do about it. No matter how much money NYC throws our way it's impossible to measure how much growth has been lost over the years as a result of their politics, which run the state. I'm all for secession, not because I hate NYC or anything, but because we are not one state, NYC is a separate universe. It should be it's own little state.
Yes I agree 100%. It's not that NYC sucks tax dollars from WNY (like a lot of people in WNY wrongly think) but its the NYS policies set by politicians downstate that put WNY at an economic disadvantage. Secession would be desirable for both areas.
Add the new growth industry in greek yogurt! NY milk for NY made yogurt near Batavia.As well as some large companies moving here for sheer cost effectiveness.
A few days of no traffic into NYC/LI after Sandy showed how vulnerable the city was for most everything. Here, I don't know about most of you, but we arem rural and we have a generator, minimum 2-3 weeks food ( can/dry) and a full freezer and even ( God forbid!) a well - which hasn't been used in years and is very hard water, but it is there. Oil lamps are our source of light in no electric situations. Septic as well - the well works on toilets. We made it thru the Blizzard of 77 and the October Surprise with no issues. I cannot say that occurs easily in NYC/LI.... I grew up there when it was a lot less populated and the east end of the island was still farms!
You are totally correct. It was a nightmare here on Long Island, with most people totally unprepared!
Yes I agree 100%. It's not that NYC sucks tax dollars from WNY (like a lot of people in WNY wrongly think) but its the NYS policies set by politicians downstate that put WNY at an economic disadvantage. Secession would be desirable for both areas.
Well I'll give you an example of Cuomo's push to raise the minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage in NYC/LI is just political theater because the market rate for low skill work is already well above the minimum wage, so it probably wouldn't have much of an adverse economic impact there (plus a lot of illegal aliens work off the books down here, in jobs such child care and landscaping, so it really doesn't matter what the minimum wage is in that case).
Upstate with its much lower cost of living and a higher percentage of the workforce working on the books would be more impacted by this because businesses may not hire as many workers, as the market rate for some jobs is only at the current minimum wage. You may say "oh well those are only minimum wage jobs", but people have the start somewhere and now there may be less opportunity for them.
Yes I agree 100%. It's not that NYC sucks tax dollars from WNY (like a lot of people in WNY wrongly think) but its the NYS policies set by politicians downstate that put WNY at an economic disadvantage. Secession would be desirable for both areas.
Exactly
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