Those close to Governor Cuomo have called his budget revolutionary. But it is far from the revolution someone like myself might have suggested. Under his proposal, instead of paying higher taxes for the same public services, New Yorkers will pay the same taxes – highest in the nation – for diminished public services. Those who have made out on the deal might not grab as much extra. But they are certainly not giving anything back. Particularly Generation Greed. Let’s provide some examples.

Reviewing the economic history of the past 35 years, one finds that two groups of people are getting richer: the executives who sit on each other’s boards and vote each other a rising share of private sector income, and the retired, particularly retired public employees and those approaching retirement, who control state and local government. Everyone else is getting poorer, a trend that has been covered up first by having a higher share of family members in the workforce, then by taking away their future income when they themselves reach old age, which doesn’t affect their current spending, and then by debt. There is, in other words, the executive class, the political and politically organized class, and the serfs, with the latter including members of generations born after 1955 or so in the former middle class. The point of intersection between the two advantaged groups is the projected rate of return for public employee pension funds, and the Wall Street firms that manage them.