NYC Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, apparently hasn't learned anything from ongoing events in Europe. As New York City's budget shortfall grows, Bloomberg believes he can conquer it by laying off thousands of public workers.
| In his updated four-year city financial plan, Bloomberg details roughly $1.6 billion of cuts designed to balance this and next year's budget. "The bottom line is we don’t have the money, but we do have the obligation to provide the essential services," Bloomberg said. Overall, the city's workforce will be reduced by about 2,000 people before the first of the year and more than 8,000 people in 2012, including teachers. There will be a total of 6,000 layoffs. The rest will be through attrition. A wide range of departments will face cuts, including the New York City Police Department, the New York City Fire Department, the Department of Sanitation, youth services, senior services and libraries. Bloomberg is also calling for week-long furloughs at the Department of Transportation -- a move that requires union approval. Specifically, the mayor's budget team proposes closing 20 fire companies at night, meaning approximately 400 firefighting shifts between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. could be eliminated. |
This will not only hurt the economy and shrink the tax base, causing the city's deficits to grow even bigger, it will also dramatically reduce public safety. It's a horrible solution.
Instead of firing workers Bloomberg should be down in D.C. lobbying lawmakers for more Federal aid to the states because only the Federal Gov't, as a currency issuer, can do that. States can't. Instead, Mayor Mike goes around giving lame speeches about how the United States "doesn't have any money." (Meanwhile, we somehow "found" $32 TRILLION over in the past six months to pay bond holders.)
The talk of "belt tightening" and "sacrifice" is hypocritical because it flies in the face of statements by Bloomberg and other big city mayors and governors around the country about not wanting to raise taxes. Spending cuts are the fiscal equivalent of tax increases in that they remove private sector income. That is a tax increase by any other name and it's unfair because it targets those least able to pay.
Who benefits? Wall Street firms and the wealthy, who see their share of income rise proportional to the rest. There's no secret why the income gains of the 1-percent is far outstripping the gains of the 99%. It's all due to policies designed to make that happen.
