The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Fareed Zakaria, "The Crisis of Democracy Is Really a Crisis for the Left" / "Why Is the Left Flailing? Look at New York vs. Florida"
An interesting column yesterday in the Washington Post. An excerpt:
The crisis of democratic government then, is actually a crisis of progressive government. People seem to feel that they have been taxed, regulated, bossed around and intimidated by left-of-center politicians for decades — but the results are bad and have been getting worse.
New York, where I live, and Florida, where I often visit, provide an interesting contrast.
They have comparable populations — New York with about 20 million people, Florida with 23 million. But New York state's budget is more than double that of Florida ($239 billion vs. roughly $116 billion). New York City, which is a little more than three times the size of Miami-Dade County, has a budget of more than $100 billion, which is nearly 10 times that of Miami-Dade. New York City's spending grew from 2012 to 2019 by 40 percent, four times the rate of inflation. Does any New Yorker feel that they got 40 percent better services during that time? …
It's easy to comfort oneself by thinking that these sky-high tax rates and growing government revenues are providing some crucial ingredients of progressive government. But they are often simply the toll of waste and mismanagement. The first phase of the Second Avenue subway line construction, at $2.5 billion per mile, was eight to 12 times more expensive than a sampling of similar projects in places such as Italy, Sweden, Paris and Berlin….
I think there are crises for both the Left and Right in America. I'm glad that institutions that are generally on the Left (such as the Post) are starting to taking seriously the Left's problems, and I hope that something similar is happening on the Right.
