> After some digging, I realized that just 10% of the population pays about 71-72% of the taxes.

Keep in mind you're talking about a local municipality which is going to receive a large chunk of its revenue from property taxes, fees, sales tax etc. From https://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/understandingthebudget....

The breakdown is:

  29% Property Tax
  17% State Grants
  13% Personal Income Tax
  10% Federal Grants 
   8% General Sales Tax
   8% Fees and Fines (Non-Tax)
   7% Business Income Tax
   4% RE Taxes
   4% Other Taxes

Some of these will hit the wealthy more than others (eg: Biz and Personal Income Taxes) but revenues aren't going to drop by 71-72%. I know in America taxes are super taboo but there's also nothing wrong with raising taxes on the rest of the city to cover any gap.

The highest earning 1 percent of New York City residents generated 43 percent of city income taxes

From (biased but presumably factual): https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/nycs-high-income-t...

Edit: just trying to add info, not bias the conversation! Maybe also relevant: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/3d-map-the-u-s-cities-with-...

So that's 43% of 13%, call it 5%. A far cry from 71.

And if I'm not mistaken, the city still gets that money as long as the job is located there anyways.

A common misconception. You don't pay NYC income taxes if you don't live in NYC.

It also stands to reason that other tax receipts will go down if people move away e.g. rents go down -> propery values assessed downwards -> taxes decrease.

That’s 1% not the 10% from the original comment

Ok, but it's still out of 13, so maybe we're going for 8?

Or <gasp> reducing services to balance the budget. God forbid they only fill the potholes people complain about.

Edit: the pothole was supposed to be a metaphor for something the city does but could do a lot less of without people actually being badly affected.

That's the great thing about being NYC. That 10% of people funding everything are not the typical two or three hundred thousand a year guys that pay taxes in other cities. They are billionaires, most of whom are not even in real estate, who own skyscrapers, or the leases, all over Manhattan. Oftentimes just for vanity, or even just bragging rights over their wife's brother's skyscrapers. (I'm serious. This happened, I was there. And it was at that point I decided some people just had too much money.)

When money like that is available to a city, you end up with infrastructure projects of the scale NYC has, the ability to tell your state "thanks but no thanks", Oh, and police departments with intelligence units that outstrip the capabilities of the intelligence apparatus in most Asian and South American nations.

The average american has no frame of reference for the kind of wealth at the disposal of NYC. I say, let them fix all the potholes. Regular people may as well get something out of it.

The richest city on the planet can't afford to fill potholes?

people typically only complain about them when they have caused damage to their vehicle. lazy evaluation of maintenance is more expensive in the long run.

> I know in America taxes are super taboo but there's also nothing wrong with raising taxes on the rest of the city to cover any gap.

Raising taxes does not necessarily increase tax revenue. Is the last guy on the sinking ship going to pick up the tab for everyone?

This is why local politics is generally defanged and powerless. Ultimately you cannot make much meaningful change on the local or state level that is hostile to capitals interests. If what you do is anti-business, even if its in the interests of your actual voting residents, the knock on effects of being "undesirable" for the large companies that largely prop up a lot of economic sectors can see the economic costs equal to or even greater than the benefits given to your community.

It actually looks even worse in Europe - not only is the continent hugely economically diverse in development and in governance structure (some are much less or more corrupt and more or less democratic than others) but the free movement and free trade has functionally taken every nations economic sovereignty. Its the only point on which I can agree with Brexiteers on because the EU is much less democratic an institution than a lot of its constituent national governments are.

Ultimately final power comes down to the purse. The EU uses the Euro to control economic policy across the continent, the US Federal Reserve uses the USD to control the US economy. There is nothing you can do as any regional or local power to oppose the will of those higher institutions. Especially if you work in the peoples interests, because then you have the joint problem of attracting the poor and downtrodden because you are trying to uplift your working class while losing the favor of the capital you would depend on to generate the revenues to afford anything.

Its by design, to be fair.

I wonder if there are any good examples of successful "degentrification", when a location became more affordable, but didn't turn into a shithole.

My theory is that being king of the foreclosed feels better than being the poorest servant in the metropolis, so it’s still a net gain for these people. Just because status is all relative.

NYC is probably worth more as a largely uninhabited speculative asset, a collector's item if you will. There will still be jobs for people to keep it in mint condition.

That's Vancouver with all its absurdly overpriced uninhabited condo towers that exist only to be money laundering and parking vehicles.