France is great. I visit a few times a year, and the food is fantastic, the museums are amazing, and the day care is free (or heavily subsidized) starting at 3 months old. New York City, where I live, is also great, with pretty good food and architecture. The day care, not so much.
Of course that French day care comes at a steep price. The French — even the middle class — pay much more in taxes. According to the OECD, the average single earner pays 28% of their income in taxes, compared to 24% in the US. And that does not include the large consumption taxes Europeans pay.
Now New York’s mayor wants the city to provide free child-care starting at six weeks, among other free services. He has also promised New Yorkers someone else would pay for it: their rich neighbors. Last week reality caught up with these plans. If Mayor Zohran Mamdani can’t get the tax increases he wants on high earners and corporations, all New Yorkers will need to pay — in the form of higher property taxes now and, later, a bailout of the pension and health-care funds he plans to raid.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Bloomberg Opinion (paywall)
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Allison Schrager is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
Photo by Matthew Hoen/NurPhoto via Getty Images