The Perfect Bond for Generation Greed II

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It turns out the Generation Greed bond in Poway, California that I wrote about here is not alone. I just followed a link to this from National Public Radio. “Look, there's no doubt that this has happened in dozens if not hundreds of school districts around California. I mean, we're already finding them; we've been sort of broadening our scope and we're actually publishing a piece today that shows three other local school districts that have very similar deals to Poway's. This is a multi,-multi-billion dollar issue across the whole of the state. Tens of billions of dollars of debt out there in this type of creative financing.”

What about New York, where these horrors are cooked up. Did some of our government entities snort our own supply? The MTA perhaps, or Nassau County, or the State of New York?

The Perfect Bond for Generation Greed

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Like many Americans of the past 30 years, the people of Poway, California wanted more in government services, in this case new schools, but didn’t like taxes, and weren’t likely to complain as long as they got what they wanted. The future was not one of their concerns. And like many politicians, the Poway school board gave them exactly what the whiniest generation in U.S. history wanted. How they did so has now become a scandal that has received national attention.

“School officials said the long-term bond was needed if the district was to continue with a school construction program in these difficult economic times” according to the San Diego Union Tribune. “Board member Marc Davis pointed to the taxpayer approval of the bond measure in 2008 without a tax increase. ‘We had those parameters and we executed or operated within the parameters you had given us,’ Davis said, adding: ‘There are no backroom deals. There are no shenanigans. There is no fraud.’” Not in the legal sense, I suppose. But there is the fraud that Generation Greed has perpetrated on those coming after, and not just in Poway. As the future no one cares about continues to arrive, and politicians and the media call for “creative” ways to pay for things now that so much of people’s taxes are going to past debts and public employee retirement benefits, New Yorkers should pay attention to what the Poway Unified School District did.

Going After Yoga With Obsolete Rules

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Here is something I wanted to do something about 15-plus years ago, but go nowhere because I was a public employee, and thus could make no useful contribution to the city. Use regulations that make no sense but remain on the books, to be enforced rarely and in a discriminatory way.

The New York Times reports that some yoga studios are being fined, and are at risk of being shut down, for being "physical culture establishments," which technically they are. Basically, just about any place with exercise is required to get a special permit that requires months to get — after you have already rented a place and started paying rent, but before you are allowed to do anything to prepare the property to open for business. It is something no business other than a huge national chain can afford, so most places — from karate schools to your local health club — just open without it, or get it later. But every now and again they go after someone.

The Generational War Obama Doesn’t Have the Guts To Point Out

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If Paul Ryan had merely proposed to keep federal taxes the same, rather than cutting them, and had proposed to reduce old age benefits for all Americans, not increase them for today’s seniors and cut them for those under 55, I might have something good to say about the Romney/Ryan ticket. But instead Ryan is little more than a panderer to Generation Greed, once again promising the better off lower taxes and the non-poor richer benefits with all the associated costs shifted to younger generations. He is another in a long line of careerist frauds.

So why doesn’t President Obama say so? Why doesn’t he highlight the Republican way of victory over the past 30-plus years, selling out the future and those who will live in it on behalf of the most selfish generations in American history? Why doesn’t he take this opportunity, win or lose, to ensure that no one under 55 (if they bother to show up) votes for a Republican at the national level ever again? Two words – Walter Mondale. Since he promised to raise taxes and cut spending to reduce the deficit, no Democrat has dared to stand up for the future of this country. Instead they have sought to get a few more of the benefits for their yuppie and public employee union constituents, at the expense of the people they pretend to represent, while hoping to avoid the blame in the end. If Obama would highlight the generational inequities not only of the Ryan plan but also of the past 30 years, I would vote for him enthusiastically. But he dares not, because he leads a Generation Greed-run party pandering to Generation Greed benefitting interests.

The Windsor Terrace Walgreens

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Although I have a master’s degree in city planning I generally am interested writing about public finance rather than land use issues. But since my neighborhood is wigged out about the closure of the local Key Foods, and future replacement by a Walgreens, I might as well do the usual and write a post pointing out the unsaid, even if I don’t really feel passionately about the whole thing.

Based on the meetings, petitions, and press coverage, one would think the Windsor Terrace Key Food, a successor to a Bohacks that was built in the early 1950s, was a beloved institution. But lots of people who are complaining now were hardly enthusiastic about the place back when it was open. As someone put it “the only thing worse than Key Food is no Key Food.” The chain has a high-low strategy. For certain items, for the weekly specials, and for basic foodstuffs it was a pretty good deal. For other items and for non-food items it was not. We shopped at Key Food for some things, therefore, and not for others, but over the decades that certainly added up to at least $60,000 spent by my family at that store, in today’s money adjusted for inflation. Others presumably spent more. But then the owner, being 80 years old, wanted to retire, and who could be grudge him? Supermarket chains offered to pay over time, but Walgreens offered to pay up front, and that’s what he wanted, I was told. So now what?

How Then Shall We Live: Education in the Wake of Generation Greed

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Now that the latest education finance data is out, I’m prepared to write a post on the near and intermediate term future of education in NYC (and perhaps elsewhere). Thanks to a couple of decades of retroactive pension enhancements, pension underfunding, and inflating the problem by sweeping it under the rug, it is not a future of “reform” or “improvement” no matter how anyone chooses to define it and no matter what one’s education politics. It is a future of degradation, one I have already described in detail in this post, one that is well worth a read.

Basically, you cannot have one year in retirement for each year worked without getting it at someone else’s expense. Huge if funded over a career, the cost of that kind of retirement becomes devastating if granted retroactively, and that is what the United Federation of Teachers has achieved twice. New York City’s public schools are going back to the 1970s, and this time they won’t be alone, because the same sort of irresponsibility has occurred in much of the country. Although elsewhere, taxpayer underfunding of promised pensions, rather than retroactive increases in those pensions, account for more of the damage. Underfunding, that is, by past taxpayers with future taxpayers holding the bag. So now what? 

Census Bureau FY 2010 Education Finance Data

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I understand that there is a group called StudentsFirstNY, organized by the affluent to do battle with the teacher’s union over “school reform.” As the battle rages, however, I can’t help but think the whole thing is nothing but a distraction – from the fact that retroactive pension enhancements and pension underfunding, leading to a huge shift in available taxpayer funds to the retired, have doomed the public school system for a generation, despite much higher spending than in the past. Particularly in New York City, where the cost of retroactive pension enhancements is wrecking the schools for a second time, just as they were starting to recover from the first time. So if StudentsFirstNY really wants to wake people up, it should use its resources to send every parent, teacher and taxpayer a postcard with the following information.

In Fiscal FY 2010, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, New York City spent $23,472 per student on public schools, compared with an average of $22,861 in the Downstate New York Suburbs, $18,546 for New Jersey, and $12,502 for the U.S. as a whole. Adjusting the New York figures downward for higher average non-Wall Street private sector wage here, the NYC total is $17,647 per student, still 41.2% higher than the U.S. average. New York City non-instructional spending is and always has been low compared with the US. average and other parts of the state. Spending on instructional (teacher) wages and benefits (including retirement benefits) totaled $13,469 per student in NYC in FY 2010, or $269,380 per 20 students, or $161,628 per 12 students. Adjusting the NYC figure down for the higher average wage here, you get $10,126 per student spent on teacher wages and benefits in NYC, or more than 77% higher than the U.S. average of $5,703. The NYC figure for teacher wages and benefits was also higher than the average for the Downstate Suburbs, although a higher share of the suburban teacher dollars went to wages, and not to pensions and other benefits.

Con Edison: Who is To Blame?

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If this post takes it will seem like a miracle, and I’ll finish off that FY2010 Census Bureau public education finance data for publication next week. Reading between the lines, it is clear to see what the source of conflict is that led to the Con Edison lockout/strike: not enough money in the pension fund. Like our local government agencies, Con Edison is a monopoly, and more for Con Edison workers means less for other workers due to higher rates (or vice versa). Con Edison managers and shareholders represent a limited buffer that could also become better or worse off as well, but as for the government the issue is mostly a question of fairness among workers.

So why is there not enough money in the pension fund? Did shareholders/managers skimp on contributions when asset prices were inflated during the various bubbles, to get higher executive pay or profits? Were some of the savings passed on to ratepayers in the form of lower rates than would have otherwise been the case, under Con Ed’s regulated “cost plus” pricing? As for the unionized workers, the question of fairness comes down to a simple question: are they only getting the pensions they were promised when they were hired? Or were those pensions retroactively enhanced at some point (or perhaps more than once point) in the past 20 years, without the cost of the increases being honestly disclosed to those who would ultimately be forced to pay for them?

New York: If You Can’t Make It Here You Can’t Make It Anywhere

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While waiting for some new data and a Supreme Court decision, we’ll interrupt the series of posts on making adjustments to the pillaging of our existing institutions to report some good news: New York City is getting better at allowing people to create new ones. People who have started their own business have told me the most important factor in their success is not the ability to create to good product or service, but the ability to sell it. Customers were the scarcest resource even before the global crisis of demand created by the end of the U.S. consumer debt binge. And metropolitan New York, combining a large population, above average incomes, and a large and diverse potential business client base, has lots of potential customers. Many of which can be reached in person in a small area in or near Manhattan. Combine that with a large and talented workforce and global connections, and I think the song “New York, New York” had it exactly backward. This is, or ought to be, a fertile ground for the new.

While New York as a place is hospitable to entrepreneurs, however, New York as a political culture has traditionally been hostile. To New York’s Democratic establishment the only good business is an existing business, preferably a large corporation that that makes campaign contributions. This bias has come out in a variety of ways, from tax breaks and subsidies to big companies, to complex and obsolete regulations that are only enforced against those who don’t play ball, to calls for commercial rent control. Wall Street may have both the Democrats and the Republicans in their pocket, but in the past New York’s Democratic politicians have shown zero interest in new businesses, and have generally preferred to preside over subsidized decline. A few years ago I had wondered why Mayor Bloomberg, coming into politics from the outside as someone who have founded a large company himself, hadn’t done more promote New York as a place to “take your shot.” But I’m pleased to report there has been a change large enough for someone like myself, on the outside, to notice it. But I have a question. Where is the attempt to encourage new banks?

How Then Shall We Live: “Retirement” in the Wake of Generation Greed

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There is a commercial on the airwaves right now that I just can’t stand: an investment company provides some quotes from a series of people on the first day of their retirement – the first of an average of 6,000 days, they say. That’s an average of 16.4 years. For most of human history, however, “retirement” has meant a brief period of leisure after a full life of working, generally a period when working was no longer possible. According to the Historical Statistics of the United States, the 1890 the decennial Census found 68.3% of American men age 65 and over to be in the labor force, working or looking for work, even though back then “work” usually meant physical labor. The figure drifted down to 54.0% in 1930, before the passage of Social Security, and may have hit bottom around 1985, when just 16.8% of married men 65 and over were in the labor force. The large-scale entry of married women into the labor force obscures other trends, but the percentage of single women age 65 who were in the labor force fell from 19.7% in 1970 to 9.7% in 1998.

For a fortunate generation or two, some workers were allowed to spend decades in retirement, often having as many non-working years supported by others as they had previously worked. That was possible because younger generations were richer, larger, better educated and more productive, and could easily carry the smaller number of modestly living retirees from prior generations. It was also possible because those older generations had saved for retirement. Today, younger generations of Americans are no larger, no better educated, and lower paid than the retirees they are expected to carry. The generations now in or near retirement have been more affluent during their working years, and expect to live similarly well in retirement, and yet most of them have borrowed rather than saved. Those younger, for the most part, will not get pensions, and may not get much Social Security. But encouraged by Wall Street firms seeking fees, the myth of decades of high consumption leisure lives on. Something that is only really possible at other people’s expense.