|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ]
[ First in Thread ]
Posted by Peter Rosa on Sat Aug 21 15:14:23 1999, in response to Next Recession (Re: New York City State (was Original MTA Plan)),
posted by Larry Littlefield on Sat Aug 21 11:22:21 1999.
[No one is willing to say that local government in the rest of the stae is overpaid and overstaffed. No Democrat is willing to say that the reason the city spends so little on everything else and collects so much in taxes is that it spends so much on Medicaid. And no one understands why we can't afford the Second Ave.]
All of which goes to show that it was unfortunate that the city did *not* go bankrupt during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Had it gone belly-up, some sort of federal control board would have taken over municipal finances. And chances are, the board would have been dominated by anti-urban Sunbelt types. Why would that be good? Well, the board members wouldn't have been subject to local political pressures - they could have told the Upper West Side to jump in a lake - and therefore could have dismantled the city's social services and health care system. Today there'd be plenty of money for the Second Avenue Subway. There'd be no such p.c. nonsense as a city "Department of Homeless Services," for Christ's sakes. And there might well be office towers and Intel chip fabs on the sites that used to be occupied by municipal hospitals. If only ...
(There are no responses to this message.) Replying to posts on SubTalk are disabled at this time.
|