Binghamton & Whitney Point make list of Upstate's top 50 poorest

[Spuds]

Well, Pete believe what you will.  This discussion has been going on for years and it has been proven (somewhere) that NYC contributes more in taxes than it receives.  My own (albeit limited) common sense tells me that upstate taxes could never support the highways and other infrastructure required.  Just not enough people.  We'll just have to agree to disagree. LOL!

[binghamtonian]

On 7/26/2019 at 4:19 PM, PeteMoss said:

Links to news articles are proof of nothing.  How about some real numbers from NYS?

Did you even open the links I sent, especially the one from the Rockefeller Institute? They have numbers, real numbers, the one has a TON of numbers, all from the state.

[PeteMoss]

22 hours ago, binghamtonian said:

Did you even open the links I sent, especially the one from the Rockefeller Institute? They have numbers, real numbers, the one has a TON of numbers, all from the state.

Yes I opened the links.  The Rocky link went to their home page, not to a specific story.

Did YOU open the link?

[binghamtonian]

4 hours ago, PeteMoss said:

Yes I opened the links.  The Rocky link went to their home page, not to a specific story.

Did YOU open the link?

Yes I did, that's why I posted it. Look, THIS LINK

https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2011-12-Giving_and_Getting-min.pdf

It's a link to a pdf, click on that link. You will see numbers, lots of official numbers.

[Kaz]

On 7/17/2019 at 12:47 PM, ndirish said:

I make this point to people often.  It's not just the cost of the house, it's the taxes.  You can afford a lot more house somewhere else.  Plus NY electricity is very expensive, gasoline is expensive, insurance, etc are all more than many places.  It's a great area (or at least it was) - but it's very expensive to live in Binghamton.

Yup. Here's a depressing thought - in 20 years of living in my home I have now spent just as much on property taxes as I did to buy the house in the first place. So, to put it another way, if I sell my house for double what I paid for it (good luck with that), I break even. Maybe I should become mayor so I can get a favorable assessment for once.

[PeteMoss]

On 7/31/2019 at 11:57 AM, binghamtonian said:

Yes I did, that's why I posted it. Look, THIS LINK

https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2011-12-Giving_and_Getting-min.pdf

It's a link to a pdf, click on that link. You will see numbers, lots of official numbers.

Once again, it is not official government numbers.  I don't care what numbers are on a website.  I can make up numbers too.

From your linked pdf   "Source:􀀃Rockefeller􀀃Institute􀀃calculations."  With nothing backing up the numbers.  11 charts say this.  There is nothing showing their source for the numbers.

 

[ginger]

On 8/2/2019 at 9:56 PM, Kaz said:

Yup. Here's a depressing thought - in 20 years of living in my home I have now spent just as much on property taxes as I did to buy the house in the first place. So, to put it another way, if I sell my house for double what I paid for it (good luck with that), I break even. Maybe I should become mayor so I can get a favorable assessment for once.

 Me Too! Add in the city bags, and water sewer..franchise fee on cable bill...what else? Waayyy more!

[binghamtonian]

On 8/3/2019 at 8:20 AM, PeteMoss said:

Once again, it is not official government numbers.  I don't care what numbers are on a website.  I can make up numbers too.

From your linked pdf   "Source:􀀃Rockefeller􀀃Institute􀀃calculations."  With nothing backing up the numbers.  11 charts say this.  There is nothing showing their source for the numbers.

 

Christ almighty, the VERY FIRST ENDNOTE states this...

"1. The comptroller’s cash report for fiscal 2010 is available at

1. http://www.osc.state.ny.us/finance/cashrpt/annual2010.pdf."

Those are OFFICIAL numbers from the state. You can't get more official than that.

Another section stated "data provided by the Office of the State Comptroller from OSC’s records of individual payments during the fiscal year. These data sets include actual local assistance pay- ments to school districts, municipalities, and other entities; payroll disbursements to state employees; state-operations payments to providers of goods and services; and “general state charges,” most of which is payments for state-employee pension and health insurance benefits."

and yet another..."For allocation of aid to public schools and School Tax Relief payments during fiscal 2010, we used State Edu- cation Department data"

They literally cite their sources.

 

[PeteMoss]

1 hour ago, binghamtonian said:

Christ almighty, the VERY FIRST ENDNOTE states this...

"1. The comptroller’s cash report for fiscal 2010 is available at

1. http://www.osc.state.ny.us/finance/cashrpt/annual2010.pdf."

Those are OFFICIAL numbers from the state. You can't get more official than that.

...........................................

They literally cite their sources.

 

That link is the ONLY link in the whole document.

"They literally cite their sources"?  Either they cite them or they don't.

[binghamtonian]

Did you read the other stuff I quoted, directly from their report, as to where they got their numbers from? State Education Dept data, State Comptroller, OSC, etc.

[PeteMoss]

10 hours ago, binghamtonian said:

Did you read the other stuff I quoted, directly from their report, as to where they got their numbers from? State Education Dept data, State Comptroller, OSC, etc.

Good research reports always show where the data came from.  This is so the research can be checked and verified.  There is no way to check or verify their calculations.  Therefore the report is meaningless.

The document is meaningless.

[binghamtonian]

10 hours ago, PeteMoss said:

Good research reports always show where the data came from.  This is so the research can be checked and verified.  There is no way to check or verify their calculations.  Therefore the report is meaningless.

The document is meaningless.

You're simply ignoring where they got their research from because you don't want to believe what they're saying. Just be truthful, don't deny the facts that are in front of you. It doesn't fit into your agenda, so you simply dismiss it as being fake, even though there are multiple references in the materials as to where the numbers come from.

[Bingoloid]

 

3 hours ago, binghamtonian said:

You're simply ignoring where they got their research from because you don't want to believe what they're saying. Just be truthful, don't deny the facts that are in front of you. It doesn't fit into your agenda, so you simply dismiss it as being fake, even though there are multiple references in the materials as to where the numbers come from.

Pete, you're a smart guy, but this myth pervades nearly every state that has a large, poor, rural expanse and relies on one or two major cities. People in downstate Illinois think they pay for the El, because they don't really understand the scale of the difference in how much tax money is spun off in Chicago or how much their own local public services actually cost, and it offends their sensibilities to believe they're being subsidized, but they are.

There are a number of legitimate arguments for some value being extracted out of upstate, like downstate counties deliberately transporting their homeless out of the area so that they're someone else's problem (a practice as old as time, used all over America, and something upstate cities do, as well) but Wall Street alone and all the associated spending accounts for something like 15-20% of the state's earnings. NYC tourism accounts for sixty million people a year, about 20-25% of them from foreign countries, coming in and dumping tens of billions of dollars into the state. There's no comparison at all with the Oakdale Mall or anything else we do up here.

Are you really able to look around at all the bridges back and forth over the Susquehanna and the Chenango rivers, the pensions due to generations of police officers, teachers, and firefighters, and sincerely believe that this poverty-stricken area pays its own bills without generous state aid? Yes, our property taxes are high per unit of value, but as we've already discussed in this thread, the property has very little value to begin with, so individual homeowners pay less than half of what they do downstate. Westchester pays average property taxes of $17k and has several times the population of the Southern Tier - far more individual developed properties.

The only real cash cow we have going is the university, and that, itself, also overwhelmingly involves pumping money from downstate families into the community, not to mention the high-earners who pay the bulk of the income taxes - almost none of whom live here.

The methodology the Rockefeller Institute used to break out the data in the budget is detailed in Appendix 1 of the PDF.

[M_Sable]

On 8/6/2019 at 9:39 AM, Bingoloid said:

 

Pete, you're a smart guy, but this myth pervades nearly every state that has a large, poor, rural expanse and relies on one or two major cities. People in downstate Illinois think they pay for the El, because they don't really understand the scale of the difference in how much tax money is spun off in Chicago or how much their own local public services actually cost, and it offends their sensibilities to believe they're being subsidized, but they are.

There are a number of legitimate arguments for some value being extracted out of upstate, like downstate counties deliberately transporting their homeless out of the area so that they're someone else's problem (a practice as old as time, used all over America, and something upstate cities do, as well) but Wall Street alone and all the associated spending accounts for something like 15-20% of the state's earnings. NYC tourism accounts for sixty million people a year, about 20-25% of them from foreign countries, coming in and dumping tens of billions of dollars into the state. There's no comparison at all with the Oakdale Mall or anything else we do up here.

Are you really able to look around at all the bridges back and forth over the Susquehanna and the Chenango rivers, the pensions due to generations of police officers, teachers, and firefighters, and sincerely believe that this poverty-stricken area pays its own bills without generous state aid? Yes, our property taxes are high per unit of value, but as we've already discussed in this thread, the property has very little value to begin with, so individual homeowners pay less than half of what they do downstate. Westchester pays average property taxes of $17k and has several times the population of the Southern Tier - far more individual developed properties.

The only real cash cow we have going is the university, and that, itself, also overwhelmingly involves pumping money from downstate families into the community, not to mention the high-earners who pay the bulk of the income taxes - almost none of whom live here.

The methodology the Rockefeller Institute used to break out the data in the budget is detailed in Appendix 1 of the PDF.

Bingoloid is on target.

My opinion stated much earlier in the thread was based on dated information and one segment of where funds came from and went to when I was working for NYS.

I researched Bingoloid's points, and I believe that he is correct.