seriously, could this happen anywhere else?

From a recent comment on a Vox post:

...sometime in the sixties, a benighted mayor of NYC decided that he could raise money for the city by taxing awnings. Every building in town had an awning over every window--the city would be rich! So he instituted an awning tax; within three months everyone had taken their awnings down, and the awning manufacturers went out of business.

Wow. Let's just take a minute to soak that in...

Only in NYC could something that awesomely stupid take place, and someone that awesomely stupid be elected mayor. Well, okay, maybe it could happen anywhere in the state of Massachusetts and in isolated pockets in the northeast and Pacific coast regions. Actually, the U.S. populace is plenty capable of electing someone of the same or greater idiocy to lead this wonderful country. And come to think of it, a significant portion of the U.S. population is far dumber than that mayor, and far more socialist too. And this did happen in the sixties, the worst decade in American history with regard to lasting damage to the nation.

Okay, so maybe this shouldn't be surprising. Heck with it, you get the idea.