A recent poll shows New Yorker are against all spending cuts and tax increases. These traditional telephone polls, in my view, are probably skewing older — toward Generation Greed, the one that ran up the debts and promised itself benefits for seniors it refused to pay for.
The only budget cut New Yorkers favor, according to the poll? Lower wages (but not retirement benefits) for state (lot local government or non-profiteer) workers. Of which there are relatively few, and which have absorbed a substantial share of the cuts already. The state has a $9 billion budget deficit I read, although that is likely an underestimate. According to employment and wages data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, state workers earned a total of $12.3 billion in 2009, down slightly from the year before. That is actually down, not a diminished pace of growth.