Comments on: State of Upstate

By: Denizen

Denizen — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 05:05:12 +0000

Downstate politicians like Paterson couldn’t give two shits about Upstate. With such lopsided demographics and power distribution, there’s little incentive for downstaters to care the least bit about our problem up here in the wilderness.

To succeed we need to secede, it’s as simple as that.

By: STEEL

STEEL — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:02:51 +0000

You have to wonder how many more resources would now be available to the state to get through this economy if its policies had been geared toward growth instead of being geared toward decline. Imaging the additional tax revenue that would be generated by Rochester and Buffalo if they had twice the population they currently have.

If you think that 2 times the population is not realistic think about this.

Metro Atlanta in 1950 had a smaller population than metro Buffalo. In the ensuing time period Atlanta went from 997,000 people to 5,626,000. They did that in Atlanta because they promoted business instead of looking at it as a tax cow. Oh yes Buffalo in that time period? from just over 1M people to just under 1.2M people and going down.

How can any government justify that performance over such a long period of time? It is a disgrace.

By: Starbuck

Starbuck — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:18:32 +0000

What could really help is improving the business cliamate. That’d mean reforms to seriously lower taxes and other costs of running businesses. Often discussed examples include cutbacks in Medicaid, repealing costly labor laws (Taylor, Wicks, scaffoliding, etc.), and pushing for givebacks in public employee labor contracts (retirement benefits, work rules, etc.).

Those kinds of reforms would help the whole state. However they won’t or politically can’t happen in NY state, no matter how many caring I-feel-your-pain speeches are given or where the speeches are held. If Paterson promised those, he’d be disowned by the party and defeated in the 2010 primary by someone promising more traditional approaches like fighting for working families (those who haven’t moved to a Carolina) and asking rich businesses to pay their fare share.

By: Starbuck

Starbuck — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:14:58 +0000

Even if they “care” (and show they do in great speeches at proper locations), it doesn’t matter if they still won’t or politically can’t make the kinds of policy changes that could really help.

Sure, he can promise some spending. In Buffalo the local pols would want it spent on things such as the Canal Side hotels and museum (barf), the Richardson Tower (yawn), and more building on the medical campus. Those have all been promised by previous governors. And of course the state annual monies sent to local governments and schools, and some other things – brownfield cleanup, subsidies to particular companies like GM-Tonawanda, Geico, Bass Pro, etc.

That same kind of spending has been going on a long time here. It’s more of the same and we’ve seen those don’t make widespread long term impact on the economy.