City Council Speaker Corey Johnson wants to kill 7,000 local jobs by legislating his private morality into law — and he’ll likely succeed, because the cultural elite agrees.
We’re talking, of course, about the bill to ban the sale of new fur garments in the city. The reason: Johnson’s “fundamental belief that killing animals to create a luxury item” is wrong. Yet the killing isn’t done inside the city. How many other products don’t meet his personal approval?
He’s not alone. Fashionistas like Tim Gunn of “Project Runway” support the ban, noting that the fashion industry has “evolved.” Well, yes: One day you’re in, the next day you’re out. But that’s no argument for outlawing whatever doesn’t meet your taste, even if it once was essential to your industry.
Two beavers adorn the official seal of New York City — a nod to the early Dutch and English settlers who traded in beaver pelts. In the industry’s heyday, New York produced 80% of the fur coats made in the United States.
Gunn is right that “consumer demand for fur has plummeted,” but there’s still enough to employ thousands of New Yorkers who earn six or seven figures less than he does.
As Samantha Ortiz, a second-generation furrier, wrote in these pages recently: “Shutting down small businesses that are providing jobs and tax revenue is the opposite of progressive politics.”
This, when a New York ban won’t remotely stop the fur trade, a $33 billion industry worldwide. Luxury buyers can go elsewhere, or use the internet.
If Johnson & Co. really think this is progressive, then progressivism isn’t about protecting the little people, but only a matter of self-satisfied posturing.
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