If You Live in This City You May Have To Pay a Surcharge To Get Your Presents
Do you do your Christmas shopping online?
If you do, and you live in New York City, there’s a chance you might need to increase your budget next year to accommodate a delivery surcharge.
NYC’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing a budget crisis. One Democrat’s proposed solution? Add a surcharge for most package deliveries in the city.
As reported by WNBC-TV, New York state Assemblyman Robert Carroll of Brooklyn has proposed a new bill that would require New York City residents to pay a $3 surcharge on all packages ordered online, except for food and medicine.
Carroll and John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transportation Workers Union, penned an Op-Ed in the New York Daily News on Monday outlining the supposed benefits of the surcharge. Not only would the surcharge raise over $1 billion per year for the MTA, they claim, but it would also encourage New Yorkers to shop at local small businesses as well as help fight climate change.
Never mind that many New York City retailers have been forced by the government to close their storefronts (some permanently) in the name of stopping the spread of the coronavirus.
Never mind that for months, New Yorkers have been encouraged, if not mandated, to stay home as much as possible.
Now they’re being encouraged to do their shopping in person, or pay the price.
As for climate change, the surcharge will help save packaging and reduce emissions: “Instead of shipping someone a pair of new sneakers on Monday, a pair of socks on Wednesday and a toaster oven on Friday,” Carroll and Samuelsen wrote, “Amazon could put them into one box and (gasp) make you wait a little.”
You see, that way the delivery truck only has to make one trip down your block that week, instead of three, and you only have to pay one $3 surcharge.
According to the authors, it’s a win-win!
This is a clear sign that government is growing too big. It’s not the government’s job to micromanage how Americans do their online shopping or how Amazon decides to ship the orders.
More importantly, this would have an outsized impact on middle- and lower-income New Yorkers, because $3 for them is a lot more than $3 for a wealthy person.
Of course, Carroll and Samuelsen’s Op-Ed ignores this point.
We’ve already seen plenty of stories about people and businesses fleeing New York City. There’s no way an additional tax is going to convince people to stay.
First, New York closed many stores, forcing residents to rely on online shopping. Now, a state lawmaker wants to add a surcharge to get those online orders delivered.
What a racket.
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