Today the New York Times notes that states are approaching a debt crisis. And what is the crisis? When lenders decide that younger generations may be unwilling to pay more and more taxes for fewer and fewer services, and refuse to pay the debts and pensions older generations promised themselves but refused to those coming after. Until that point, the generations now in charge will continue to grab more and more with an implicit promise that those in the future will repay by having less and less. While this is a national problem, a function of Generation Greed, it is worse in New York, where Generation Greed is greediest.
To put this in perspective, look at some comments from Mayor Bloomberg. "I believe we have an obligation to honor those pensions that were made for existing city employees," Bloomberg said.
Even if those pensions were retroactively enhanced after they were hired as part of a political deal.
And, apparently, those pensions can't be taxed in New York State either the way the falling wage income of the working slaves is.
Nor can retirees, apparently, be told that since they cut themselves a ripoff deal on pensions, they'll have to pay for their own health care.
Nor can current employees be told that, since their union's assertions of the cost of those pension enhancements were a fraud, they'll have to contribute more to the pension plan themselves. New York public employees contribute far less to their own pensions than those elsewhere, and very few state exempt retirement income from state and local income taxation.
"But I don't think we have any obligation and don't think we can afford to continue to offer those to future people that we hire down the road," according to Bloomberg (and public employee unions everywhere).
This from the man who cut the pay of most public employees by 15 percent compared with those who came before, cut the pay of new police and firefighters by 40 percent, and cut the take home pay of future teachers by five percent less than two years after asserting that allowing existing teachers to retire at age 55 instead of 62 would cost nothing.
So are the pay, benefits and tax exemptions of older generations fair? Could everyone retire at age 55 after saving virtually nothing themselves, living in leisure for 25 years after 25 years worked with taxes making up the difference? Than if so, why are younger generations getting less, and why hasn’t that deal been extended to non-government workers? And the current deal is unfair and unaffordable, why is it always others – not those with the unaffordable deals – who are asked to sacrifice?
Why doesn't Mayor Bloomberg, or Sheldon Silver, or David Paterson, or Dean Skelos come right out and say that each generation is going to be worse off than the one before to pay for what their generation promised itself and did not pay for, and the only argument among them is how to apportion the cost among those other than themselves?
Finally, you may recall the rejection by the New York State Legislature to force the financial overlords with their limos and the political overlords with their placards to pay some rent for their excess seizure of the public right of way through congestion pricing, proving some revenues for the serfs in transit vehicles and on sidewalks. That was rejected, along with a $322 million federal grant, because it was a plot by right wing Republican George Bush. Money for the MTA, it was promised, would come from somewhere else and there would be no problem.
Well the federal government was at it again, demanding more charter schools to that children and parents will have more choice in education the way teachers have choices when they buy from those parents in the marketplace, and demanding more accountability from those teachers. And once again the New York State legislature stood firm, rejecting $700 million in federal grants that were part of a conspiracy by right wing Republican Barack Obama.
Ideology? Or Generation Greed.