Hacker News Reader

The top 1% of earners pay 40% of New York City's income tax. The real question is how will NYC cope with the decreased tax base.

Does it cost more per capita to run NYC than it does smaller cities like Austin?

Maybe not to run, but the capital investment is probably higher. As well as things like subways, which there isn't one of in Austin.

Education, healthcare, and public employees are almost always the largest expenses.

For instance, in CA, only about $100M a year out of the $100 billion a year budget is spent on transportation [1].

Because of prop 98 in CA, a minimum of 40% of the budget has to go to education [2].

In NY, it's only 4% spent on transportation [3].

Austin is building a subway.

If NYC is less expensive to manage per capita, I'm guessing that's reflected in a lower taxation rate. Don't they have a lot of room to raise taxes?