What is this illegal economy and why is it unknown outside of NYC?
I have some NYC-native friends whose parents make less than $20k a year on paper but own homes and generally live comfortably.
This is common in their immigrant community. On top of that, people rent apartments to each other cash only, pay with cash at restaurants or grocery store, etc.
EDIT: I think my comment was't clear: I pay my taxes, just not in the US. :)
I think that by tolerating tax cheating (withdrawing IRS funding), the US is punishing those who are honest.
My comment was triggered by the very nonchalant way how the above comments made it seem like a normal NYC thing to steal tax money.
If taxes are too high then they should be lowered. Selective enforcement is bad.
I don't have any solution here. Lots of resentful people claim to follow a specific dude that told rich people to pay their taxes, to give all their money to the poor, etc., and if a lifetime of religious practices don't persuade them what on earth can a random internet stranger like me do?
It's 2023. We have the technology to run more and more parts of the government in a way that we pay directly for the things we use so that each need currently met by government is forced to be more efficient if people saw how much they are paying for that. Locally, I pay a separate fee for trash pickup. That's awesome. If all government services moved to a fee based approach, you could literally pick and choose what parts of being civilized you want and what parts you don't want.
This is essentially just privatizing everything. Just have all the kids pay for their own schooling. Eliminate Medicaid, kids can afford their own healthcare. All social safety nets would be eliminated, as if they require the people receiving the benefits to fund it then those programs would just never actually work.
> Locally, I pay a separate fee for trash pickup. That's awesome.
Its not awesome when your neighbor decides to just no longer pay for trash service and starts piling up trash heaps right along your property line leading to extremely unsanitary conditions right next to your home. Or when your neighbors don't bother paying their fire department fees and that trash heap right next to your house starts burning but the department won't bother doing anything until its your house on fire.
Good plan if you want to drive birth rates down even faster.
(which, some people actually do want)
And screw the poors while we are at it! Added bonus!
The initial roads layout were likely put there by slaves. The capital growth needed to propel the family into generational wealth to fund our childhoods likely was fueled by slaves. We need to perpetuate slavery because muh roads were made possible by slaves and I benefitted.
Fortunately we can put the descendants of those slaves to work yet -- we'll call it 'property tax' and they still to this day work the fields, even if they're childless, to subsidize education of my farming family. If they don't pay it the sheriff just boots them out onto the street!
Fortunately at least we seem to have understood the fact I benefitted and got roads from it, doesn't mean it needs to be perpetuated.
If it doesn't have externalities that make this undesirable, why is it a government function?
In any case, today, there's only one party opposed to the recent funding increase, and it's the party that proudly claims to be the most anti-crime and anti-deficit folks in congress. Those are the facts today. This absolutely makes them the shittier people.
Cashless societies are evil. Advocates and supporters are the enemy of the people and deserve to be viewed as such.
On the other end of the spectrum we have billionaires paying accountants and lawyers to exploit every tax loophole they can find. They don't even need to do it, they could easily just pay their taxes owed, but they choose not to.
That being said, I'm not going to take exception with the people who are economically at the bottom and whose lives would be far worse if they didn't do what they can to avoid having their pockets picked by government. I wish my pockets weren't being picked but if someone else is able to avoid that fate, good for them.
It's far more moral for these people to keep the fruits of their own labor to make ends meet than for them to steal from other productive citizens trying to make a living, which is what we'd be forcing them to do if there was no way for them to avoid having their pockets picked by the government.
> I have some NYC-native friends whose parents make less than $20k a year on paper but own homes and generally live comfortably.
But they live comfortably — at least the people I talk to go on vacation often, were able to help my friend with student loans, have cars in NYC, etc.
We probably agree in many ways on how badly tax money is spent, but that there is "nothing moral" about it is a statement that does not make sense.
But Henry George lost his NYC mayoral bid all those years ago.
I wouldn't be angry at working middle- or upper-middle-class people cheating the taxman in order to actually enjoy a decent living. I'd be angry at the politicians, large companies and ultra-high-net-worth individuals that are able to legally but unjustly cheat the taxman (and ultimately the taxpayer) or otherwise unjustly enrich themselves or their friends via lobbying, under-the-table money or favours thanks to having the right connections.