A question for Mayor Bloomberg: If bio tech is really a “major growth indus try,” as he noted at Monday’s groundbreaking of the East River Science Park, why are taxpayers subsidizing it to the tune of $50 million?
Mayor Mike said the $700 million, 1.1-million square-foot bioscience lab “will be a premier research and development center that will enable researchers at our great hospitals and universities to turn their ideas into commercially viable products.”
Sounds like an attractive investment. Indeed, the city’s deputy mayor for development, Dan Doctoroff, says the biotech industry will be central to tomorrow’s economy.
One might then expect the financial whizzes running Wall Street – who attach money to ideas for a living – to be fighting for a piece of the action.
They’re not.
Do they know something Doctoroff doesn’t?
For sure, the project’s rationale is sound: As Hizzoner said Monday, the city can’t always be so dependent on the financial-services industry.
But picking winners and losers is a crapshoot. Ten years down the line, Mayor Mike’s proud pronouncements on biotech’s potential could look as prescient as other pols’ past predictions that dot-coms were a strong bet for the future.
An easier way would be to simply improve the climate for all industries, substantially easing the onerous taxes and regulations that block business growth.
Attracting entrepreneurial activity is borderline impossible when Gotham’s 8.85 percent business tax rate nearly doubles that of next-door Westchester County and is more than 70 percent higher than Los Angeles’.
New York also sabotages itself by taxing personal income – one of the only American cities to do so.
Fact is, nobody knows what industries will drive tomorrow’s growth.
But if Albany and City Hall were to truly slash taxes and regulations, they’d be more likely to sprout in New York.