Taxes bad? Not compared with New York's

I've been on a two-week hiatus — otherwise known as the family summer vacation — but real estate news followed in my wake like so many exhaust fumes.

After visiting New York, I can say one thing with confidence: If Florida property taxes are a burden, New York property taxes are 500 pounds of lead strapped to a toddler's back.

By New York, I don't mean Manhattan or plush bedroom communities on Long Island. I'm talking upstate New York with its Rust Belt industries and hardscrabble dairy farms.

The Empire State shows no mercy to people uppity enough to build new homes. Two owners of new houses similar in size to mine in Florida confessed to paying 21/2 times my property taxes. We're talking middle-class families with $12,000 tax bills.

What do they get for those taxes? The tatty roads are a shock absorber salesman's best friend. The schools are decent, but staffed with aggressively unionized teachers eager to collect their pound of flesh.

Social services are wasteful to the point that ne'er-do-wells from New York City relocate there to enjoy the relatively lavish free lunch. The Medicaid portion of one homeowner's property taxes outstripped his own health insurance premium at work.

Such generosity becomes self-defeating. Thousands of the unemployed and the unemployable migrate to these towns, devouring the budgets of social workers, teachers and the police. Renters replace homesteaders.

After all the budget-busting blight of upstate New York, Florida seems relatively blissful. We're light on services, but our taxes are correspondingly low, despite the recent runup.

When it comes to attracting migrants to Florida, I suspect we'll continue to find willing takers above the Mason-Dixon Line. Floridians can pine all they want for the low-tax nirvana of South Carolina or Tennessee. But for this displaced New Yorker, there's no going home.

James Thorner can be reached at thorner@sptimes.com.