It doesn't help when people see Elon Musk's new trillion dollar contract, ( and his billionaire buddies) and try to reconcile that with the fact that they can't afford rent, education, groceries, day care, health care etc, even with two or more jobs.
Interesting stat. In isolation seems significant. Question it raises, which is very important to test your conclusion, is why is NYC such a an outlier. Did the rich change their tax address to a location outside NYC, which could have a substantial impact on real wages? If so, would Mamdani’s tax policy have any appreciable residual impact on whether they stay or go?
Doesn't matter, James, there's been a sizeable drop in median real income. And it checks out from a street sense, too. The wages are already wages for a much less expensive city even as the rents and other costs increase by leaps and bounds.
I mean consider that unless you're in a rent-controlled/stabilized apartment, or you're one hell of a bargain-hunter probably in an illegal rental, you're looking at $3500-5K/mo for a tiny apartment, probably not in a great place, until you're over an hour out of town, and even then you've only brought the rent down by $1K-1500. If you're above median at $100K, this is well over half your after-tax income - ADP shows you're taking home around $5800/mo without benefits/retirement taken out. (Don't forget NYC has municipal taxes, too.) And you're still in danger of getting kicked out when the building's sold. Now on top of this you're somehow supposed to buy some of the most expensive food in America, your transit's expensive, you're paying retail rates that reflect the price of the real estate, good luck saving anything. The one saving grace is that your apartment's so small it doesn't cost a mint to heat and you can't buy much stuff to put in it.
"...the only sustainable way to help the poor and middle class is to have a thriving business sector that generates a lot of tax revenue." While a thriving business sector means more jobs and perhaps higher paying jobs, some people will always be left behind for various reasons that include age and disability. Those people in particular will need and deserve help from the prosperous members of society around them. I doubt that Mamdani can pass all of his agenda, especially free buses and government-owned grocery stores, but some of his Democratic Socialist agenda would help tens of thousands of New Yorkers, including rent stabilization. We would do well to remember that the happiest people in the world live in societies that can be labeled democratic socialist or socialist. This is not happenstance. When people feel financially secure, they can turn their efforts to increasing their contributions to society.
Oh boy. I mean yes, but...if this is representative of educated-Boomer-man centrist takes, if you really think this is why he won, we're in some trouble, I think. Because this misses the point in pretty spectacular fashion.
I'm not a fan of the guy and I don't think he's got the friends to do the job at all, much less to do anything like keep those promises. And yes, the salaries are too low and the rent's beyond offensive. Beyond offensive. But COL is only part of why, not even the major part of why, he (barely) won.
- There was no one else to vote for. Cuomo is disgusting, a crook, a demonstrated liar. Your cohort consistently ignores the reality, and realities, of women, but I have zero centrist women friends in NYC who voted for him BECAUSE DUH. Regardless of how much they weren't excited about Mamdani. I don't know what else women have to do, Peter, to convince you that we're real five-fifth humans with the vote. No, we're not voting for this serial creep who goes around assaulting women at work. And Sliwa, Sli-hee-hee-hee-wa, I mean a sign of how much nothing was running against Mamdani is that we went in these weird tight little circles of "well, he's the realest New Yorker up there, may -- oh my god, it's *Curtis Sliwa*, have you had a stroke."
- He hasn't got one foot in the grave. You may have noticed that this is a thing.
- He's actually representative of the city as it is now. It's a much more cosmopolitan city than it was when I was born, let alone when you were born. The city's much more African than it was then. Much more Arab than it was then. Much more everything than it was then -- except Italian, Jewish, and Irish. (I remember thinking while reading out a class list, about a decade ago, that graduate teaching assistants would do fine with Chinese, Arab, and Nigerian names, but stumble now over the name "Gallagher," which you just didn't see anymore. And that was in a much, much whiter part of the country.)
- He knows how to communicate and takes communication seriously.
He's no AOC, who's legitimately tough, and I think the SNL gameshow had him dead to rights. But if you guys can't recognize why he appealed to so many people, and why Cuomo didn't, we're going to keep on having real problems at the ballot for the next decade or so.
Incidentally, the best indicator of why that's happened to wages is the number of wealthy suburban parents who line up at apartment showings ready to co-sign, pricing others out. You match "everybody wants to live in New York" with "young people are subsidized by rich parents" and suddenly there's no reason to keep salaries reasonable. The parents will keep writing checks to the landlords. It's the same reason Walmart doesn't pay a living wage and why university tuitions fly skyward so long as lenders show up -- someone else's willing pockets appear to be bottomless.
Where is the discussion of Economics? I don't see any explanation of wage theory, ideas around economic profit, or regulatory capture that would explain how we got where we are and how do we change things. At a bare minimum you should explain what you mean by the words Democratic Socialism.
It doesn't help when people see Elon Musk's new trillion dollar contract, ( and his billionaire buddies) and try to reconcile that with the fact that they can't afford rent, education, groceries, day care, health care etc, even with two or more jobs.
Interesting stat. In isolation seems significant. Question it raises, which is very important to test your conclusion, is why is NYC such a an outlier. Did the rich change their tax address to a location outside NYC, which could have a substantial impact on real wages? If so, would Mamdani’s tax policy have any appreciable residual impact on whether they stay or go?
Doesn't matter, James, there's been a sizeable drop in median real income. And it checks out from a street sense, too. The wages are already wages for a much less expensive city even as the rents and other costs increase by leaps and bounds.
I mean consider that unless you're in a rent-controlled/stabilized apartment, or you're one hell of a bargain-hunter probably in an illegal rental, you're looking at $3500-5K/mo for a tiny apartment, probably not in a great place, until you're over an hour out of town, and even then you've only brought the rent down by $1K-1500. If you're above median at $100K, this is well over half your after-tax income - ADP shows you're taking home around $5800/mo without benefits/retirement taken out. (Don't forget NYC has municipal taxes, too.) And you're still in danger of getting kicked out when the building's sold. Now on top of this you're somehow supposed to buy some of the most expensive food in America, your transit's expensive, you're paying retail rates that reflect the price of the real estate, good luck saving anything. The one saving grace is that your apartment's so small it doesn't cost a mint to heat and you can't buy much stuff to put in it.
"...the only sustainable way to help the poor and middle class is to have a thriving business sector that generates a lot of tax revenue." While a thriving business sector means more jobs and perhaps higher paying jobs, some people will always be left behind for various reasons that include age and disability. Those people in particular will need and deserve help from the prosperous members of society around them. I doubt that Mamdani can pass all of his agenda, especially free buses and government-owned grocery stores, but some of his Democratic Socialist agenda would help tens of thousands of New Yorkers, including rent stabilization. We would do well to remember that the happiest people in the world live in societies that can be labeled democratic socialist or socialist. This is not happenstance. When people feel financially secure, they can turn their efforts to increasing their contributions to society.
Oh boy. I mean yes, but...if this is representative of educated-Boomer-man centrist takes, if you really think this is why he won, we're in some trouble, I think. Because this misses the point in pretty spectacular fashion.
I'm not a fan of the guy and I don't think he's got the friends to do the job at all, much less to do anything like keep those promises. And yes, the salaries are too low and the rent's beyond offensive. Beyond offensive. But COL is only part of why, not even the major part of why, he (barely) won.
- There was no one else to vote for. Cuomo is disgusting, a crook, a demonstrated liar. Your cohort consistently ignores the reality, and realities, of women, but I have zero centrist women friends in NYC who voted for him BECAUSE DUH. Regardless of how much they weren't excited about Mamdani. I don't know what else women have to do, Peter, to convince you that we're real five-fifth humans with the vote. No, we're not voting for this serial creep who goes around assaulting women at work. And Sliwa, Sli-hee-hee-hee-wa, I mean a sign of how much nothing was running against Mamdani is that we went in these weird tight little circles of "well, he's the realest New Yorker up there, may -- oh my god, it's *Curtis Sliwa*, have you had a stroke."
- He hasn't got one foot in the grave. You may have noticed that this is a thing.
- He's actually representative of the city as it is now. It's a much more cosmopolitan city than it was when I was born, let alone when you were born. The city's much more African than it was then. Much more Arab than it was then. Much more everything than it was then -- except Italian, Jewish, and Irish. (I remember thinking while reading out a class list, about a decade ago, that graduate teaching assistants would do fine with Chinese, Arab, and Nigerian names, but stumble now over the name "Gallagher," which you just didn't see anymore. And that was in a much, much whiter part of the country.)
- He knows how to communicate and takes communication seriously.
He's no AOC, who's legitimately tough, and I think the SNL gameshow had him dead to rights. But if you guys can't recognize why he appealed to so many people, and why Cuomo didn't, we're going to keep on having real problems at the ballot for the next decade or so.
Incidentally, the best indicator of why that's happened to wages is the number of wealthy suburban parents who line up at apartment showings ready to co-sign, pricing others out. You match "everybody wants to live in New York" with "young people are subsidized by rich parents" and suddenly there's no reason to keep salaries reasonable. The parents will keep writing checks to the landlords. It's the same reason Walmart doesn't pay a living wage and why university tuitions fly skyward so long as lenders show up -- someone else's willing pockets appear to be bottomless.
Where is the discussion of Economics? I don't see any explanation of wage theory, ideas around economic profit, or regulatory capture that would explain how we got where we are and how do we change things. At a bare minimum you should explain what you mean by the words Democratic Socialism.