Since I’ve been asked to write for this blog, I’ve delivered a litany of (primarily) fiscal complaint, a series of objections to the ongoing and expanding advantages grabbed by powerful interests in Albany (and elsewhere) at the expense of the private sector working poor, the young, the future, and New York City’s children. But I try not to make complaints unless I have what I believe are at least partial solutions. So for state government, and for the month of October, I’m going to provide some.
They won’t make many people on the inside happy.
For one thing, I’m going to assume that fiscal 2007/2008 will be the worst fiscal year of the next administration. Already, the collapse of the housing bubble is slashing local government tax revenues, both property tax assessments and real estate transfer taxes, across the country. New York is behind the trend, but real estate sales volumes have already dropped here. New York benefited from a real estate boom for the ages and, at the state level, blew the proceeds and then some. Wall Street tax revenues are also cyclical, and are headed down. Crains reports the securities industry had its worst July and August since 2003, with business in most lines off by up to 50 percent. Bloomberg reports Wall Street’s U.S. earnings will tumble 23 percent next year after firms chalk up their second- most profitable year ever in 2006, according to the Securities Industry Association. Again, the state not only spent all the extra business tax dollars from the Wall Street boom on tax breaks and spending, it borrowed on top of it. Again.
And speaking of borrowing, our state government has been sucking revenues out of the future, and deferring costs to the future, since 1990. The Cuomo Administration did it during bad times, but the Pataki Administration did it during good times and bad. The state government will now be in the position of Brazil, which has to run a budget surplus equal to 10 percent of the total just to service old debts. Taxing far more than you spend feels a lot different than spending far more than you tax. But that is the choice that has to be made, preferably before New Yorkers are forced to face a decline in living standards as great as Brazil and Argentina have faced, as a consequence of prior selfish generations there. The greed of the past means the fiscal bag of tricks is empty. When you’ve already spent the next 30 years tobacco judgment proceeds by borrowing against them, the only possibility other than the money being already gone is that the proceeds won’t arrive and you’ll have to raise taxes and cut public benefits to pay off the tobacco bonds. Among other bonds.
Thus, the next recession will be harsher. So I will not be writing about all the benefits I’d like to hand out, and all the taxes I’d like to see reduced. Congratulations to Pataki, Silver, Bruno and rest for your crushing victory over my community and my children and our future. I hope you will be remembered as you should be. You’ve done what you’ve done, and the rest of us have to move on and salvage things as best we can. Perhaps if a new generation of leadership makes harder choices, and a new generation of citizens makes the best of things, then things can start turning around in a few years and will be significantly better in a decade or so.
When handing out the costs, I plan on taking my cue from former President Bill Clinton, who said that those who got the benefit of the tax cuts in the 1980s that led to a huge increase in the federal debt should be the ones to pay more in the 1990s to bring the debt down. The same may be said for the State of New York in the 1990s. It’s time to impose some measure of equity, instead of hitting up the same victims over and over. And if circumstances do not permit one to “level up,” then it’s time to level down. Expect those listed among the top ten in lobbying expenditures in Albany, along with the legislature they lobby, to those with the least appreciation for what I have to say. I don’t expect that any of it will be considered “politically realistic.” “Realism” is not the path of those who speak up for the cheated, and for the future. Nonetheless, it might be helpful for someone to put forward a version of what fairness would be. Even if it will likely be considered a joke.
I’m not going to want to hear about all the pain and suffering any change would cause. Those who have grabbed, and kept grabbing, have caused enormous pain and suffering to others, without thinking about it for a second. I’m going to commit the heresy of speaking about New York City’s children and children elsewhere in the state, current taxpayers and future taxpayers, retired public employees and newly hired public employees, those working in stores and services without health insurance and pensions and those working in public agencies with health insurance and pensions, those with fewer tax breaks and those with more, at the same time, as if all were equal. In each case, the latter will see this equality as “victimization.” In reality, it would merely be an end to victimization – but not justice, because justice implies restitution.
Moreover, I’m going to recommend truth-telling. Some of the measures I will propose are little more than analogues of the push to have corporate executives tell shareholders the actual cost of their stock options and pensions, of truth in lending and truth in advertising laws, of required disclosures of all kinds. Today I received a $400 check, which will cost my family or my children’s family $800 someday. Tomorrow, taxpayers should receive an itemized bill that tells them what they are getting for their money, and what they aren’t getting because others have already gotten it. And I don’t mean the poor.
So prepare your rotten tomatoes. But I won’t care. I’m going to keep up standing for my kids, the other kids, the future, younger generations, those who aren’t working the system, those who are denied choices, those who take pride in what they can contribute the community not what they can suck out of it. It is their views I care about, not anyone else’s.
P.S. I’m going to try to take the advice of some fellow bloggers, and avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, but not backing up everything I say with sources, facts, spreadsheets, graphs, etc. in what a prior boss once called my "beat them into the dust style." But just because I’m going try to keep it short, doesn’t mean the facts aren’t there. If I’m not pretty sure of something, I don’t say it.