[matsuokk]

I love paying taxes in NYC. I estimate NYC taxpayers saved me ~$100K in medical bills when I unexpectedly needed surgery and qualified for low-income Medicare coverage. I love that I’m again a heavy contributor to that system and happily so. And I love watching bike lanes built left and right, I love the city buying up empty lots to build parks, I love the Marathon, the “5 Boro” bike tour, the incredible (and heavily subsidized) ferry service, the public school free lunch programs, the vaccine outreach campaigns, the reliable snow removal, and the wonderful collection of libraries and museums and public spaces that are free and open to me. I love that the city cuts long-term lease deals with multi-tenant property owners to guarantee supply of low-income housing. A bunch of my friends grew up in that kind of housing and some of my sweetest neighbors live there now. I think MTA is one of the very BEST features of this or any world-class city — trains run all night! And it makes me super happy whenever I’m going somewhere at 5am and the train is packed with workers in steel-toed boots and jackets with local union patches commuting to the job site. I think my taxes are spent well enough — I know this because I love living here and have never given a serious thought to leaving for tax avoidance or whatever other fake drama is being projected onto this city from afar.