{"id":3444,"date":"2008-05-14T09:02:25","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T14:02:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3444"},"modified":"2008-05-14T09:02:25","modified_gmt":"2008-05-14T14:02:25","slug":"a_taxing_tautology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/05\/a_taxing_tautology.html","title":{"rendered":"A Taxing Tautology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because if you didn’t buy counterfeit goods, then we would have more police to investigate the selling of counterfeit goods<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The city is poised to unveil a campaign to educate tourists and locals alike about the harsh realities of supporting the counterfeit goods industry, which officials say costs the city more than $1 billion in lost sales taxes each year. <\/p>\n

Beginning Monday, posters adorned with messages that relay the lesser-known perils of counterfeiting will be plastered on phone booth kiosks in areas of the city infamous for harboring peddlers of fake name-brand goods, such as Chinatown and Times Square, officials announced yesterday.<\/p>\n

Unveiled at the Harper’s Bazaar Anticounterfeiting Summit, the posters warn shoppers about the harmful consequences of counterfeiting with messages such as “when you buy counterfeit goods, you support child labor.”<\/p>\n

Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler announced the two-month campaign in front of a room of executives from businesses wounded by counterfeiting, an industry experts say generates upward of $650 billion a year. He said the sales tax lost to counterfeit goods would provide the city with funds to hire 10,000 new police officers, firefighters, or teachers.<\/p>\n

“This is a problem that is a little like weeds, we need to keep pulling them out,” he said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except that . . . if all sales taxes only generate $4.5 billion for the city budget (see, for example, this .pdf from the city’s Independent Budget Office<\/a>), is it really<\/em> possible that New York City is losing $1 billion in revenue from counterfeit bags? Doesn’t that basically mean that counterfeit bags account for 25% of all sales in the entire city? (Geez, maybe New York really has become the Tijuana of the U.S.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

This is not to say that buying counterfeit goods is some kind of harmless, victimless crime — I don’t believe it is<\/a> — but, again<\/a>, what is the city doing carrying the water for the fashion industry? Don’t the police have better things to do? And citing “lost sales taxes” isn’t enough . . . if that were true then we should crack down on all sorts of things . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because if you didn’t buy counterfeit goods, then we would have more police to investigate the selling of counterfeit goods: The city is poised to unveil a campaign to educate tourists and locals alike about the harsh realities of supporting the counterfeit goods industry, which officials say costs the city more than $1 billion in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,68,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everyone_is_to_blame_here","category-follow_the_money","category-law_order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}