Mayor Bloomberg’s interesting framing of how rich people bring more money to the city’s budget, which helps the many poor people living in the city (yes, despite all the frenzy about hipsters in NY, 46% of New Yorkers’s live under 150% of the federal poverty threshold, or less than $35,775 for a family of four)….
Category: Austerity
The Radicalism of Today’s Austerity in One Chart | Economic Policy Institute
The Radicalism of Today’s Austerity in One Chart | Economic Policy Institute.
Left with nothing | The Washington Post
Cities struggling with vacant properties can use their ability to place liens on properties that fall behind on their taxes, a terrific way for cities to reclaim properties not being used by their owners (usually property speculators). Flint and Cleveland have used this, as have other so-called ‘shrinking’ cities. But in this terrible twist, Washington…
Daily Reminder of Texas State Budget Cuts – NYTimes.com
Texas’ hostility to public investment is starting to come home to roost in tangible ways. Great piece in the New York Times about how falling transportation funding manifests itself in gravel roads, one of the few places where spending cuts are felt by nearly everyone. Transportation is not the state’s only underfinanced program, but it…
Rich Man’s Recovery – NYTimes.com
I’m too jet-lagged to write much about this, and am coming late to the lively discussion over Saez & Piketty’s latest piece about rising income inequality. The dramatic rise in earnings and wealth inequality between the 1% and the rest of the country is important, and as Krugman says, demoralizing for most Americans. But there’s…