The Heavy Cost of a Career in NY.

Carol and I lived an exciting year in New York City just after I graduated from law school. I wanted to be a trial lawyer and had a dream job as a law clerk with the Hon. Milton Pollack, US District Judge for the Southern District of New York. But, after that year went by, we were happy to leave, because it looked like a tough place to raise a family. Had being a top trial lawyer been what motivated me the most and at any price, there we would have stayed.

Yesterday's "Review and Outlook" in the WSJ featured a new Manhattan Institute report entitled "Albany Inc." The report details the grip that government there and its minions have on the state's economy. The editorial has this quote from the report:

Between 1979 and 2004-a period that saw two sustained U.S. economic booms-New York created new jobs at less than half the national pace, underperforming even the 'old and cold' states of the upper Midwest . . . New York's share of total U.S. personal income dropped by nearly 10% during the same period, and its share of all states' economic output dropped by 12%.

According to the WSJ, the report says that the state's "astonishingly high tax burden" is largely to blame. High taxes, of course, fuel big government, big lobbying, big corruption, and a corresponding loss of liberty. What an irony that the "free states" of the 21st Century tend to be in the South and not in the cradle of Abolitionism.