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Taxation by the states is not people’s problems in the Northeast and “Northeast” contains a lot of variance in cost of living and economic outlook.



How can you possibly assert this when property taxes in the Tri-State (23 million people) are often $10,000 a year per house, and income is taxed at 5-9% compared to Texas which is 0.

The price of rent/mortgage is directly affected by property tax.


Homeownership is not necessary for well-being. The absolute cost of property taxes in some parts of the Northeast are high because the properties are highly valued. Taxes are not robbery, people in higher taxed areas get more services than low-tax places like Texas. Higher property taxes correlate with higher rent but the inverse can be true when home buying (i.e. a seller can ask more for a home in a low property tax city than an otherwise identically situated high property tax city). The Northeast is a lot more than just the Tri-State area, there are plenty of communities that do no have high property taxes either in absolute terms (because the homes aren't worth much) or as a percentage (either because the areas offer less services or they have so much commercial income that home property taxes can be kept low).


I appreciate your reponse, and agree that the entire country is not the Northeast :)

However, I would urge you not to discount the existence of 50m people in the Northeast megacorridor[1]. I am not particularly aware of what services are received that directly benefit people living here other than the ones that I have personally experienced, which are unemployment income and pension income for teachers (my parents).

In fact, 90% of property taxes in NY are sent to our school districts. I don't have kids, so I can only benefit from this in the abstract.

Additionally, I think it's important to note that in the last 20 years, wages have not risen in NY more than a dollar or two per hour, yet property values have risen from 100k to about 300k on Long Island.

I think these are serious headwinds for anyone pulling in 30k a year post tax, such as myself.


My original point was simply that property taxes come way behind many other problems in the Northeast. Housing costs, whether it's renting or buying, is near the top of the list but it's not like having a property tax rate comparable to Houston would make those homes affordable.

Sometimes there are situations where a senior citizen wants to stay in their home but the assessed value has gone up so much over the decades (plus some tax rate increases) that they can't afford the property tax. They may not value the financial windfall of selling the home and downsizing but there are worse problems to have. Anyway, the original topic was about wages and people of traditional working age.




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