The Telegraph | by Matthew Lynn | July 18, 2023
Attempting to drive into the city will mean hammering your credit card. Once you get there, beware trying to order a pizza, given the new restrictions on wood and coal-fired ovens designed to help save the planet. And if you happen to buy or rent an apartment, you may have to rip out the gas hob, because that is also doing too much damage to the environment.
This may sound like an early draft of Sadiq Khan’s manifesto for re-election as Mayor of London. But in fact, it is just the latest series of measures being considered for New York City.
The Big Apple has always been a world-leading city. The trouble is, right now it is leading the world in left-wing virtue-signalling, piling more and more red tape onto some of the highest taxes in the United States.
New York officials risk destroying its economy – and if London only had the courage to elect a pro-business, pro-enterprise mayor, it could benefit enormously from their folly.
New York is introducing so many new rules and regulations that it is hard to keep up. This month, it has finally received approval to introduce a congestion charge, imposing a levy of up to $23 for entering Lower Manhattan.
Even though the evidence is mounting to suggest that charges don’t do much to reduce traffic congestion (average road speeds in central London, for example, fell from 8.7 miles per hour in 2008 to 7.1mph in 2018, according to data from the city’s Assembly), it is pressing ahead anyway.
In what will surely be viewed as little more than another tax to penalise motorists, it is bringing in one of the most expensive daily schemes anywhere in the world.
But that is just the beginning. The city is, in effect, banning wood and coal-fired pizza ovens by imposing strict new emissions standards on restaurants serving up what has always been one of the city’s most popular meals. The backlash from the New York chefs, as one might expect, has been fierce.
Cooking something at home won’t be especially easy, either. New York has just become the first state to ban gas stoves and heating from new homes, and it may not be long before that is mandated for the rest of the housing stock as well. Its famously cold winters could soon get a lot chillier.
New York has long prided itself on being the one to beat. But it has recently turned the competition into one on green credentials and anti-business legislation. It is becoming the place where left-wing activists attempt to test their more extreme ideas.
Earlier this year, it became the first major city to legislate against discrimination towards overweight people (though perhaps the de facto pizza ban might mean there are fewer of them). It may sound inconsequential, but it adds another layer of rules that small firms will need to adhere to on penalty of endless lawsuits.
And the city has just brought in a new law requiring companies to show that the AI-powered tools they use in hiring and promotion are free of racism or sexism – surely an unnecessary step given both forms of discrimination are already illegal.
Over the last 20 years, the city’s government, which is led by a mayor and a Council of 51 members, has become one of the most officious nannies in the world. Under Michael Bloomberg, it attempted to bring in a soda ban that would have prevented regulated restaurants, fast-food establishments, delis, cinemas, and so on from selling sugary beverages larger than 16 ounces in New York City.
In fact, the only behaviour its officials don’t seem to care about is crime. Progressives in the city have taken the lead in the “defunding the police” campaign, yet there was a 22pc rise in major crimes in the city last year. The days when New York led the world in “zero tolerance” policing are a long way in the past.
There are already signs that this approach is starting to take its toll on the economy. State-wide growth has averaged a miserable 0.3pc in the five years to 2022, ranking it in 37th place among all 50 states.
It has among the highest income tax rates and has witnessed a steady exodus of wealth, with analysis by Art Laffer and Steven Moore concluding $80bn in taxable income has been lost over the last five years, almost double the next worst-hit state, California. And its commercial real estate market is crashing, with researchers from New York University and Columbia forecasting a 28pc fall in values by 2029, wiping out $49 billion from portfolios.
Part of that can be attributed to working from home, but much of it is driven by businesses getting out.
Add it all up, and the city is being crushed by a generation of woke, ideologically driven politicians who care nothing about its prosperity.
If London wanted to seize it, that could be a huge opportunity. In our globalised world, the alternative to New York for many people and businesses is not Phoenix, Austin or Miami, even if all those cities are currently growing more quickly.
It is the British capital, probably the only other major city that has the same mix of high finance, legal services, media and the arts, as well as a hyper-driven, creative workforce.
Companies and individuals driven out of New York can be just as likely to relocate to the other side of the Atlantic as anywhere else in the United States.
The only trouble is, London has its own self-indulgent, virtue-signalling mayor, who appears more interested in scoring political points than he is in attracting new businesses and talented people to the city. It has a government which promises to ignite the bonfire of red tape, but can never seem to find the matches.
Even so, if Londoners were able to eject Sadiq Khan the next time they go to the polls, which may be more likely than anyone realises right now given the intense unpopularity of Ulez in some quarters, the UK capital could look a lot more attractive.
With a pro-business, pro-enterprise mayor it could benefit hugely from New York’s self-inflicted demise. One of the world’s greatest trading and commercial hubs is inflicting terrible self-harm, handing a golden opportunity to our capital.
Source: New York City has decided to destroy itself (msn.com)
