Category: News and Opinion

In Sunday's paper. Referring to Illinois, which should hit the wall earlier than average, “We’re within a few years of having some of the pension funds run out of money…Funding for the schools is going to be cut radically. Funding for Medicaid. As these things all mount up, there’s going to be a lot of outrage…paying public pensions straight out of general revenue would be ruinous. In Illinois’s case, it would consume about half the state’s cash every year, bringing other vital state services to a standstill.” Of course it isn't just the pensions. It's the federal, state and local debts. It's the infratructure that hasn't been maintained. It's the lower pay and benefits younger generations receive, in both the public and private sectors, and will continue to receive when they get older — and face possible deprivation to pay for the prior generations than spent decades in leisure on borrowed money.

The benefit of foresight is that I'm already started moving beyond outrage to resignation.

Perhaps you are wondering why the state budget would cut municipal aid to New York City to zero, while cutting municipal aid to other areas, including those more affluent than New York City, by very little. It is because need in this state isn’t measured by the need for public services and benefits, which are irrelevant to the rich and a hassle for the political/union complex, which has privileged access to them, to provide to others. What matters is who gets jobs, and who gets sinecures pretending to be jobs. So local government employment in NYC, which was already down sharply since 1990, fell another 13,400 in the year to May according to data released yesterday by the New York State Department of Labor. Local government employment in the rest of the state, which had been up by 130,000 over 20 year, edged down just 3,400 — but public school employment in the rest of the state increased by 3,900. I guess they’ll have to slash New York City’s share of state school aid again, as in the previous two recessions.

Don’t New York City’s public employee unions have any clout? Sure they do, particularly since most of the best paid live outside the city. Far from wanting to keep their jobs, however, most don’t want to work at all. They want to retire early, at 55 instead of 62 for NYC teachers, after 25 years of work rather than 30. Thus you had the biggest fraud of the week, the UFT joining a protest cuts in schools. Guess what — NYC public school spending is going up, but more and more of the money is going to the retired, as a result of the 25/55 pension the UFT managed to grab. Protesting? They should be celebrating the money they will get for providing less and less in return.