The Latest

The Latest Public Finance Spreadsheets Page Has Been Updated

Here on Saying the Unsaid in New York.

https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/the-latest-public-finance-spreadsheets/

The page now includes all the key spreadsheets from the FY 2012 Census of Governments and other sources that I have compiled over the past year.  It now contains a full, detailed overview of state and local government revenues, expenditures, debt, employment and payroll, all adjusted to be comparable across the country, for New York City, every other part of New York State and New Jersey, and comparable states and areas across the country.  The data is not only for FY 2012, but also for FY 2002, FY 1992, and other past years.  I made a huge effort to make this information available in an easily digestible form, with fair comparisons from place to place.  I ask only that the readers look at and think about the information.

In particular, I ask that members of the media, or what is left of it, reporting on state and local government in metro New York look through the materials, download the spreadsheets, and use the data for background and story ideas. I’m sick and tired of the “facts” in public policy debates being generated almost exclusive by self interest groups and repeated with little or no recourse to more objective sources. These interest groups are always demanding more for themselves now, at the expense of unspecified others in the future, and generally getting their way. Without being questioned. It is the job of the media to ask those questions. I’ve provided the information needed to frame them. The people of this city, state and country need more than flack-driven press release journalism.

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Sold Out Futures: A State By State Ranking Based on the Census of Governments

For nearly 30 years Americans, individually and collectively, have sold the future to live for today. In the private sector each generation of Americans since those born in the mid-1950s has been paid less on average, and yet has spent more, failing to save for retirement and borrowing to make up the difference. Corporate executives had their firms borrow, not to invest in income producing assets, but to buy back stock, temporarily increasing stock prices so they could cash in on bonuses and options. Despite future financial strains on Social Security and Medicare from the retirement of the large Baby Boom generation, the federal government cut taxes drastically in the early 1980s and again in the early 2000s, while spending with abandon on health care for older seniors, ultimately leaving behind a pile of IOUs that someone else will have to pay somehow.

At the state and local government level infrastructure investment was cut but debts were increased, leaving behind roads, bridges, water, sewer, and transit systems and schools in need of repair with no money to pay for this. And pensions for older public employees who were cashing in and moving out were retroactively increased even as pension funding was cut, leaving a financial disaster behind. The state and local government aspect of this future selling, however, varies in severity from place to place. Using an analysis of Census of Governments data from the U.S. Census Bureau, this post will rank the extent to which each state’s future has been sold by its current and past politicians and the interest groups that supported them.

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