So NYC public school spending is proposed to increase by $1 billion next year in the Mayor’s budget, while what we get in exchange goes down. Expect the propagandists at the UFT to ignore the former publicly (while it will be high fives all around privately), but for no one else to acknowledge the two facts together and attempt to explain them either.
Also unquestioned — how city existing employees and retirees “earned” the retroactive pension enhancements their unions got in political deals in Albany and City Hall over the past 16 years, and why future employees are worth so much less that their pensions should be much worse than the existing workers were promised to begin with. After all, who would ask those questions? Do younger generations only deserve less in public employment, or in general, and why and according to whom?
There is one thing I didn’t know in the budget proposal. That the NYC share of Safety Net (aka Home Relief) welfare has soared to 71 percent of total spending, with the state share falling. This as Safety Net spending has soared as the welfare generation (ie. the poor component of Generation Greed) exceeds its five year time limit, and the federal government no longer kicks in. I did know that the state no longer provides municipal aid to NYC, while it does provide it to just about every other municipality in the state, including those that are much richer.
When was the press conference held, in which state legislators outside New York City announced, and the press outside New York City reported, that the rest of the state is no longer sending money for the poor and other needs to New York City? But taxes collected in New York City continue to be used for needs in the rest of the state? I don’t recall that press conference.
And I want it. I want that psychic price to be paid. By the rest of the state, by Generation Greed, and by the beneficiaries of all those retroactive pension deals. Because the sense of entitlement, driven by assisted self deception, is out of control and the damage to everyone else continues to get worse and worse.