The Beginning of the End for Big Cities

[Russ]

In my opinion, the rioting, looting and general destruction in the downtown areas of our biggest cities will start a death spiral for the Big City in general, especially coming on the heels of the pandemic shutdown.

The pandemic caused layoffs, store and restaurant closings, and a lot of people working from home. Just as stores and restaurants were about to open again and start employing a lot of people that got layed off, the rioting in many cases just destroyed the building and everything in it. If you owned a small business in a big city and your building and inventory had just been ruined - would you want to reopen? Claiming the insurance and heading out of town must sound pretty good in comparison.

How about the people that have been able to work from home? Tech companies were surprised to find out that productivity of people working from home didn't go down - it went up. It went up big time (75%). If you owned a tech company in a big city, would you want to force your employees to continue coming in to an office? If you don't, you can save a lot of money by decreasing your office size, and you can recruit employees from all over the place, and you can reduce/eliminate your city wage tax.

On top of that, there is the one higher motivator than money. Fear. How many people want to live in a city where they have to be afraid of riots and looting? Despite all the complaints about police, they are the only thing between a big city and lawlessness. If people think out of control police are bad, wait until they see out of control criminals.

Big cities fund themselves on two things - city wage tax, and property tax. What happens when people decide they don't want to work in your city anymore? What happens when employers decide they don't want to have a building in your city anymore? What happens when people decide they are afraid to live in your city anymore - or they don't like it anymore because every store and restaurant is closed for the next 5 years?

That's right, Big Cities are about to lose all their tax revenue, right when they are running out of money and have a lot of rebuilding to do. The Beginning of the End.