People act like $30/hr is high. Note this would be the mayor of NYC, so it would be raised for NYC only if he got his way. The cheapest place you can get to live on your own there I am finding is 2600 a month. So say you made 30/hr. That's $62,400 working 40 hours a week. Take out Federal/state/city taxes ends up being around $46,112 take home. The place costed $31,200. Making the lowest rent findable in Manhattan 2/3 of $30/hr.
They wouldn't be able to get approved to even live there if they tried. They would have to rent a room from someone else with a 4 bedroom place renting to 4 people for around $1200/ month. And share bathrooms/kitchen/living space with people. And they would still struggle to get by if they paid for health insurance, travel costs to and from work, food, and the whole living crap.
$30 isn't radical for NYC, it's like base needed salary... And hope you have a good stable relationship with someone else making the same, then maybe you can get your own place together, just don't do something stupid like get pregnant because you can't afford to not go to work, and can't afford to put them in daycare so you would both have to uproot and move real quick finding jobs elsewhere.
Minimum wage is current around $16 there. Standardly you put a plan in place with a set date and partial increases up to that day to allow companies time to plan and get ready. For instance the last time federal minimum wage increased, it rolled out as such
"The 2007 amendments increased the minimum wage to $5.85 per hour effective July 24, 2007; $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. "
7.25 was what they said they were going to go to, but rolled it out slowly to prepare everyone.
Jesus would NEVER Approve of ANY of these! AFFORDABLE housing? Jesus would BURN it to The Ground! PROTECTING your Neighbor? LAUGHABLE! This is the MOST Anti Jesus Platform EVER! Where's the ELIMINATING Healthcare? Where's the ELIMINATING Homes? Where's the HURTING your Neighbors? Where's the JESUS!
Landlords will go out of business. For-profit grocery stores will go out of business. People I don't know won't suffer (there's even more letters at the end and I don't know what they mean; that scares me). Businesses will have to pay more to operate, therefore prices will rise for me to protect profits. Brown people will still be where I have to see and interact with them.
Conservatives are fearful. They think when someone gets something good, it's by taking from them. Fuck 'em.
Americans will just go "this guy wants to instate free healthcare, cleanse police corruption, and to stop bombing the middle east!" and expect you to reel back in disgust.
Because their MAGAt base will in fact reel back in disgust if any of those things are proposed. If "the libs" want it, then MAGA is programmed to hate it.
See how the fox piece looks? It has the politicians face, then they let MAGA know the guy is a "lib", likely with the set up talking points. That is all MAGAts need, a face and to know the person is on the other side ... from there anything else mentioned about the person is automatically bad.
In 3 years Fox news will just show a picture of the political opponent's face with the caption "this guy is a lib" which will send every MAGAt into a murderous rage
I remember seeing video of a MAGAt rally. Trump vs. Biden election. They had a picture of Hillary up on the screen while the MAGATs chanted "lock her up".
I didn't get it. She wasn't running ... it made no sense.
I'm just envisioning it like a John Wick style contract being issued when Fox News does the bit and every magat's phone starts going off with the notification... I don't want this timeline...
Yes but many of these would require taxing the rich, which I’m against because I might somehow become rich one day through virtually no effort or understanding of how one becomes rich to begin with
That's it right there. Just mentioning the phrase tax the rich has become enough of a catalyst for the punching down to intensify. Keep the pressure on.
Fuck the establishment Democratic Party reps, run them all out of office because they will never get it. We need a new deal not conservative appeasement.
City owned grocery shops? I...wut. This breaks my mind. Not in WTF is this way, just how would this work. Curious how it will come out and hoping for the best.
The city owns and runs the grocery stores. They're not required to make huge profits and can therefore offer reasonable prices. They can buy directly from local suppliers, thus creating or securing local jobs. Basically, if you cut out all the bloodsuckers, things become much better.
The thing is, actual capitalist theory suggests it wouldn't "cut out" bloodsuckers at all. It would force them to compete but they would survive, presumably just fine.
A public option is definitely a socialist platform, but unless the government stores are allowed to operate at a loss indefinitely, supplemented by tax dollars, they pose NO real threat to those businesses, only to greedy gouging.
I don't think the idea is to eliminate 'regular' corporate owned grocery stores. I think it's meant to be an alternative that offers cheaper food for people who need that. NYC has a pretty high standard of living, I am sure there will be plenty of people who can still afford to shop at the corporate grocery stores because they are more conveniently located or maybe the selection if better, and I'm sure some will shop there just so they don't have to interact with poor people.
Public grocery stores are a useful solution to food deserts without forcing high wages or ideologically preferred suppliers. It is a zero cost option in that the stores can sustain themselves. It is a big benefit to neighbourhoods and property owners in those neighbourhoods.
The city currently has a program where they're paying private grocery stores to try and mitigate food deserts, but there's so few strings attached it's just free money to the shops.
He's proposing ending that, and using the money to directly open grocery stores in food deserts run as city owned coops.
It's not infringing on private business because they're not operating in these areas anyway.
well at least outside of the US there's tons of government-owned businesses, it doesn't really mean any major changes outside of how the administration works.
Free buses aren’t something you really need to “afford” because even in smaller cities the economic value returned through that way of operating is given back and then some. Like, they’ve been throwing free money on the ground for decades upon decades and it’s about time shit catches up to reality.
Right but I think you’ve missed my entire point somehow. Literally it is cheaper to not charge anything for transit. You don’t need to afford it, you just have to do it. It is free money, understand?
Sure but why would a fee do that? If anything that would encourage this behavior because if I pay 2$ I feel entitled to spend there as much time as I want.
This is pretty well established theory now in behavior economy:
We already invented the most effective and humane fix for this - social workers. I don't think anything can work better then another person trained in handling social situations correcting the issue themselves.
I'm seriously shocked the Fox media team didn't bother photoshopping horns on his head, distorting his pleasant, lovely smile into a menacing grimace, or altering his skin color into the brimstone-red spectrum.
Hi I'm a socialist transit worker and I thought free bus fare was a no brainer until I worked in transit, it's an awful idea. Transit cannot function effectively as transit when it is being forced to operate as a mobile shelter and bottle and wagon transit system. Fund shelters and ease the burden shouldered by transit.
(By all means make transit incredibly inexpensively accessible to anyone who needs it)
I apparently wasn't clear enough here, I'm sure there are places where free transit works great because people are so well cared for and general safety is so high that it's not an issue. That sounds wonderful, I want that here. However, I have learned the hard way that transit needs to continue being accessible to the majority even when there are people who have slipped fully into the margins who present hazards to transit customers. (Customers meaning people who need transit to travel)
Luxemburg has a great free transit system, what you guys need it to deal with homeless people and drug addicts. I mean this in a humanly way, where these people get the help they need.
Couldn't agree more, a system where the number of homeless drug addicts and marginalized people is so low that we literally don't need to worry about it sounds much better. But in the meantime the people who aren't using the bus as a shelter have a civil right to access to safe and effective transit as well that they are currently not getting and transit is dying because of it. I have no illusions on the ways in which society has failed these people, they are largely foster kids who aged out of the system and people who were only a little on the margins but functional until rent went up AGAIN and they literally couldn't afford to have a place to live anymore and spiraled from there.
Free transit won't fix that though, the interim period where free transit doesn't function is very real and valid.
Also, seriously though, Luxembourg conservatively has less than a twentieth the poverty rate as the US.
Point blank, that is not an issue caused by free transit. This is the logical equivalent of saying the school system is broken because people keep showing up to them with guns.
Point blank, the inability to deny people entry to transit and to use transit as a mobile shelter is having catastrophic impacts on overall transit use. This is the equivalent of saying the school system is broken because people keep showing up at schools and screaming at people, assaulting people, soiling themselves and the facilities and the staff have no ability to separate them or remove them from the school, so the rest of the students get home schooled or private schooled and effectively don't have access to public school. (Oh yeah, and tons of teachers and staff quit)
They need HELP and a transit system as a shelter and drug safe use space is just about the least efficient way I can imagine to help them and makes it less safe and accessible to everyone else.
You can care and advocate for more than one thing, just so you know. Housing someone is less tax money on you personally than keeping them on the street costs and there are more empty living spaces than there are folks without a home.
But, go ahead and villainize the people with nowhere to go and no other option, they're definitely the problem, aren’t they?
Edit: You’re literally just bitching about your job and asking for this to not affect you personally. That’s a shitty as fuck take on the situation.
I feel like you didn't actually read what I wrote. I ABSOLUTELY WANT THEM TO BE HOUSED AND CARED FOR. I am in no way villainizing them, this situation is not their fault. The reason we have a giant crisis of homelessness and drug use is not because we "let them". The system needs to be fixed so that population can be helped and the numbers falling into that are cut. In the meantime though, we are doing nothing and it doesn't work!
Yes... I was in favor of a lot of it... I was trying to educate people that there is more to the issue of free bus fare. Because I'm a transit worker who used to think free bus fare was a no brainer, but now believe it is unworkable without FIRST significantly improving other issues.
I don't understand why having fare free buses would mean that you can't remove disruptive people from the bus. If there is a policy that you can't deny anyone entry to the bus, that seems like a separate issue with a different solution to charging a fare. Seems like there could be rules about how much you can bring with you on the bus to solve the bottle and wagon transit issue for example.
I totally agree that the issue of homelessness needs to be addressed, and I would hope that he would address that issue as well. Seems like the whole "Build affordable housing" thing would be a start. It might be easier for people who want to get off the streets to do so if they could actually afford rent.
Never been let alone worked in Staten Island, couldn't tell you if there's more to the story there or not. Sounds great though, hope it stays great.
(I do think islands have a decent ability to be insulated from some amount of societal problems that tend to accumulate in city centers, I know the staten island ferry is free but it still may provide some barrier)
That's purely done by the MTA and would have to be at the state level. The state legislature and Hochul would have to stop profiting off the subway for that to happen.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Is the problem the fare evasion or the disproportionate amount of money spent policing fare evasion, with the collateral benefit of terrorizing the citizenry?
This might be a humor magazine, but I'll be honest on my perspective out here in NJ.
That $30 minimum wage thing scares the living daylights out of me, especially with the congestion pricing still in effect. Raising the minimum wage in the City that far will make the already ridiculous costs in NYC skyrocket. It's going to make it functionally impossible for average people who work outside NYC to regularly go in and do things. You know that business owners aren't going to eat the loss of profits, the prices will just go up to match. Rents will go up, costs will go up. I do respect the idea of trying to get to a living wage. I'd love to see a viable plan, but the best way to do it is to keep all costs down, not massively increase labor costs.
I think the bus idea is a better use of tax money than 90% of what NYC has right now, as long as the funds are focused on maintaining vehicles and paying drivers who perform well, rather than lining some suit's bank account. I don't know if that's going to be possible, but hey, the worst that happens is they try it, it fails, and the buses go back to being fare-based.
It's that wage idea that's going to really, really suck.
He's not going to get $30 minimum wage. He's starting high so he can negotiate to a middle ground. He's not going to be King of NYC. He's doesn't just get what he wants that easily.
Fair enough. He beat the party establishment. If he wins the general, he'll still have to deal with the City establishment. Still, increases in NYC's minimum wage do typically end up hurting those of us stuck in the orbit. So like I said, I'm scared. All I can do is brace for the impact, and hope that the increase in costs don't give NJ business owners ideas about how much more profit they can gouge because of the NYC cost for goods and/or services. Note that I don't actually have high hopes on that. If there's a chance they can make more profit, most places won't risk leaving money on the table. They'll raise the prices, and then lower them partway later on so they're still increased but it feels like a discount.
Someone has to pay for the busses, and for the rest of his plans. New York already has more public debt per resident than any other large city in the USA. New York also already has high taxes and a shrinking population. So yeah, I'm worried about where the money will come from. You can say "tax the rich more" but I don't think you'll have easy pickings.
I’ve been to NYC 3 times now, and all 3 times people didn’t pay for the buses, they just got on. The bus driver didn’t even look behind themselves. Making the buses free is just a formality.
The buses I used were always PACKED and in all honesty if every single person paid, the bus would sit there for like 3-4 minutes at the busy stops.
The main shopping district for my neighborhood is 10 blocks away. I don't mind walking there regularly, but there are times when I decide not to go because I don't feel like it. If I could go to the end of my block and jump on a free bus, I would go there 2-3 times a week instead of once.
I would also explore other neighborhoods more often.
Imagine how many buses congestion pricing could fund and how nice it would be to walk through the city with free buses to take you where you wanted to go. How many shops or restaurants you might go to. Maybe the library and a park. Suddenly there's more pedestrian accessible business. Even as a thought experiment it seems like it's worth the risk
as a non-american looking from outside, if NYC already taxed the rich for a lot, then to me the next sensible logical thing for the mayor to do is manage the apparently already lots of money to better use and making his platform come true. to me whatever NYC is doing that sounds like mismanagement of tax funds
I suspect a lot of NYCs liabilities are in strong union-negotiated pensions for retired police, transit, sanitation workers. Hard to get out from under those without really hurting people. The difficulty with taxing rich people is that they can easily change their tax residency to just outside NYC where plenty of counties will give them a big break on income taxes.
The difficulty with taxing rich people is that they can easily change their tax residency to just outside NYC where plenty of counties will give them a big break on income taxes.
Mamdani's proposal is to raise taxes on any company doing business in NYC. They wouldn't be able to just change residency, they'd have to stop doing business in New York entirely.
New York already has more public debt per resident than any other large city in the USA
Got a source on that? Given that it's by far the most populous one, with more than twice the population of LA (when counting within municipal limits only), and as you say has relatively high taxes, the total public spending would have to dwarf that of most STATES for your claim to be anywhere near true.
New York also already has high taxes
Which is offset by some of it going towards middle- and working class people having to pay much less for some vital goods and services than in places with a more regressive tax system where the bulk of the revenue comes from things like sales tax and hardly any is spent where it's most needed.
and a shrinking population
So you're saying that FEWER people using mass transit fare-free costs MORE? 🤔
So yeah, I'm worried about where the money will come from.
Other than the obvious answer that you reject out of hand for no reason in the next sentence, here's one
Cops. An absolutely ludicrous $5.5b/y is spent on the paramilitary group/mercenaries for the rich and powerful, terrorists for everyone else known as the NYPD.
The people of New York aren't only paying a premium for the dubious honor of having one of the most oppressive and racist police forces in the world AT HOME. The NYPD also conducts "counterterrorism", training and other operations in Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the fascist apartheid regime known as Israel, Qatar, Australia, and several European countries.
Call me crazy, but if I lived in New York, I would rather my tax dollars go to poor people being able to afford going to work and school than to exporting state terrorism and helping despotic governments oppress and suppress disfavored ethnic and religious groups.
Now that a progressive beat a centrist in a high-profile contest where the party establishment tried and failed to stop him, the talking points identical to republican propaganda come out.
Yeah, someone has to pay for it all - the WEALTHY people and corporations who benefit by the infrastructure. They get all the rewards of the system, but they expect someone else to pay to maintain it, too?
If they need to pay half of their fortunes to keep the other half, they'll be just fine. If they refuse to cooperate, we'll just take it all.
The wealthy have a choice for the next stage:
Trickle Up Economics, in which they'll still end up with the money in the end, but it greases the economy along the way,
OR
Robin Hood Economics - Take from the rich and give to the poor. The problem with this one is that it will be VERY uncomfortable for the wealthy.
You’re already paying for it, you get that, right? The thing is that EVERYBODY needs to be paying and the ones that have the most bend over backwards so that they can give nothing back. The fact that you say what you’re saying while New York is host to some of the most wealth in the entire world is a disturbing illustration of the problems and solutions at hand.
Access to food, transportation, housing, it’s almost like he thinks the job of government is providing decent infrastructure.
Or "insur[ing] domestic Tranquility,...promot[ing] the general welfare." The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.
General Welfare, sir! o7
OOOOH, he had "Welfare" in his name, must be a woke liberal!
People act like $30/hr is high. Note this would be the mayor of NYC, so it would be raised for NYC only if he got his way. The cheapest place you can get to live on your own there I am finding is 2600 a month. So say you made 30/hr. That's $62,400 working 40 hours a week. Take out Federal/state/city taxes ends up being around $46,112 take home. The place costed $31,200. Making the lowest rent findable in Manhattan 2/3 of $30/hr.
They wouldn't be able to get approved to even live there if they tried. They would have to rent a room from someone else with a 4 bedroom place renting to 4 people for around $1200/ month. And share bathrooms/kitchen/living space with people. And they would still struggle to get by if they paid for health insurance, travel costs to and from work, food, and the whole living crap.
$30 isn't radical for NYC, it's like base needed salary... And hope you have a good stable relationship with someone else making the same, then maybe you can get your own place together, just don't do something stupid like get pregnant because you can't afford to not go to work, and can't afford to put them in daycare so you would both have to uproot and move real quick finding jobs elsewhere.
Wait, we are gonna vote for a guy who is going to make renting a room more affordable?! COMMUNISM!! I WONT STAND FOR SUCH LUXURY LIVING CONDITIONS! /s
It says $30 by 2030. What is the term for Mayor? Is he promising something that literally cannot be done by him?
Minimum wage is current around $16 there. Standardly you put a plan in place with a set date and partial increases up to that day to allow companies time to plan and get ready. For instance the last time federal minimum wage increased, it rolled out as such
"The 2007 amendments increased the minimum wage to $5.85 per hour effective July 24, 2007; $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. "
7.25 was what they said they were going to go to, but rolled it out slowly to prepare everyone.
16-30 in a 4 year roll out makes sense
Wow, insane that it’s that low right now. Minimum wage in Seattle is $20.76 and grows based on inflation every year. It’s grown from $15 in 2017.
Jesus would NEVER Approve of ANY of these! AFFORDABLE housing? Jesus would BURN it to The Ground! PROTECTING your Neighbor? LAUGHABLE! This is the MOST Anti Jesus Platform EVER! Where's the ELIMINATING Healthcare? Where's the ELIMINATING Homes? Where's the HURTING your Neighbors? Where's the JESUS!
Here's how I think they see this:
Conservatives are fearful. They think when someone gets something good, it's by taking from them. Fuck 'em.
They don't even try to hide their racism anymore.
Look at this monster.
Americans will just go "this guy wants to instate free healthcare, cleanse police corruption, and to stop bombing the middle east!" and expect you to reel back in disgust.
Because their MAGAt base will in fact reel back in disgust if any of those things are proposed. If "the libs" want it, then MAGA is programmed to hate it.
See how the fox piece looks? It has the politicians face, then they let MAGA know the guy is a "lib", likely with the set up talking points. That is all MAGAts need, a face and to know the person is on the other side ... from there anything else mentioned about the person is automatically bad.
In 3 years Fox news will just show a picture of the political opponent's face with the caption "this guy is a lib" which will send every MAGAt into a murderous rage
I remember seeing video of a MAGAt rally. Trump vs. Biden election. They had a picture of Hillary up on the screen while the MAGATs chanted "lock her up". I didn't get it. She wasn't running ... it made no sense.
It's a cult ritual
Like Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984
I'm just envisioning it like a John Wick style contract being issued when Fox News does the bit and every magat's phone starts going off with the notification... I don't want this timeline...
In this case all they needed to know he's bad is to hear his name unfortunately.
it's so wild because to me his name doesn't even fucking register as unusual
I mean, most politicians do.
Groupthink is a real thing
and its evolved over the last few decades.
Fox News saw the two minutes of hate and thought "why only two minutes?"
Yes but many of these would require taxing the rich, which I’m against because I might somehow become rich one day through virtually no effort or understanding of how one becomes rich to begin with
/s
That's it right there. Just mentioning the phrase tax the rich has become enough of a catalyst for the punching down to intensify. Keep the pressure on.
You know they're mad
This is the future that those who are controlling the conservative platform are trying to prevent.
Make no mistake this is and always will be a class war about stealing the value of workers for their own personal gain.
Democrat leadership is also not happy with Mamdani. He isn't following the rules, like David Hogg, or AOC.
Fuck the establishment Democratic Party reps, run them all out of office because they will never get it. We need a new deal not conservative appeasement.
100%
Democrat leadership is tepid dogwater
City owned grocery shops? I...wut. This breaks my mind. Not in WTF is this way, just how would this work. Curious how it will come out and hoping for the best.
The city owns and runs the grocery stores. They're not required to make huge profits and can therefore offer reasonable prices. They can buy directly from local suppliers, thus creating or securing local jobs. Basically, if you cut out all the bloodsuckers, things become much better.
The thing is, actual capitalist theory suggests it wouldn't "cut out" bloodsuckers at all. It would force them to compete but they would survive, presumably just fine.
A public option is definitely a socialist platform, but unless the government stores are allowed to operate at a loss indefinitely, supplemented by tax dollars, they pose NO real threat to those businesses, only to greedy gouging.
If there was a functioning market economy, none of this shit would be necessary in the first place.
I don't think the idea is to eliminate 'regular' corporate owned grocery stores. I think it's meant to be an alternative that offers cheaper food for people who need that. NYC has a pretty high standard of living, I am sure there will be plenty of people who can still afford to shop at the corporate grocery stores because they are more conveniently located or maybe the selection if better, and I'm sure some will shop there just so they don't have to interact with poor people.
Public grocery stores are a useful solution to food deserts without forcing high wages or ideologically preferred suppliers. It is a zero cost option in that the stores can sustain themselves. It is a big benefit to neighbourhoods and property owners in those neighbourhoods.
It's a pilot program for a few stores.
The city currently has a program where they're paying private grocery stores to try and mitigate food deserts, but there's so few strings attached it's just free money to the shops.
He's proposing ending that, and using the money to directly open grocery stores in food deserts run as city owned coops.
It's not infringing on private business because they're not operating in these areas anyway.
There are already gov. owned stores in some states (liquor stores, but that's close enough).
well at least outside of the US there's tons of government-owned businesses, it doesn't really mean any major changes outside of how the administration works.
What a monster! Making the lives of people better, like a maniac!
That's some poor propaganda, comrade fox news. You should've rendered it in Arabic or Chinese to scare them out
Its crazy that NYC still can't afford free public transportation. City literally has more expensive apartments than yearly cost of operating busses.
Free buses aren’t something you really need to “afford” because even in smaller cities the economic value returned through that way of operating is given back and then some. Like, they’ve been throwing free money on the ground for decades upon decades and it’s about time shit catches up to reality.
Bus fares make up only like 2% of the income for my cities public transit system. They can afford to go free.
Right but I think you’ve missed my entire point somehow. Literally it is cheaper to not charge anything for transit. You don’t need to afford it, you just have to do it. It is free money, understand?
The point is you need pretext to remove people who use the system as a living room instead of transit.
Sure but why would a fee do that? If anything that would encourage this behavior because if I pay 2$ I feel entitled to spend there as much time as I want.
This is pretty well established theory now in behavior economy:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_crowding_theory
We already invented the most effective and humane fix for this - social workers. I don't think anything can work better then another person trained in handling social situations correcting the issue themselves.
Of corse they are. All of these things will actually help people.
No wonder establishment democrats tried so hard to stop him.
Huh... that almost sounds like a public... good. Tickle me that.
I'm seriously shocked the Fox media team didn't bother photoshopping horns on his head, distorting his pleasant, lovely smile into a menacing grimace, or altering his skin color into the brimstone-red spectrum.
Or, to be even more crude, him as a caricature of Mohamad.
(Please don't ban me mods, we live in a world where this could actually happen on national TV).
just fuckin use a picture of osama bin laden, why spend effort?
"Building affordable housing" oh the horror! Who would do such a thing?
Yass Khalifa
Yes yes yes
Hi I'm a socialist transit worker and I thought free bus fare was a no brainer until I worked in transit, it's an awful idea. Transit cannot function effectively as transit when it is being forced to operate as a mobile shelter and bottle and wagon transit system. Fund shelters and ease the burden shouldered by transit.
(By all means make transit incredibly inexpensively accessible to anyone who needs it)
I apparently wasn't clear enough here, I'm sure there are places where free transit works great because people are so well cared for and general safety is so high that it's not an issue. That sounds wonderful, I want that here. However, I have learned the hard way that transit needs to continue being accessible to the majority even when there are people who have slipped fully into the margins who present hazards to transit customers. (Customers meaning people who need transit to travel)
Luxemburg has a great free transit system, what you guys need it to deal with homeless people and drug addicts. I mean this in a humanly way, where these people get the help they need.
Couldn't agree more, a system where the number of homeless drug addicts and marginalized people is so low that we literally don't need to worry about it sounds much better. But in the meantime the people who aren't using the bus as a shelter have a civil right to access to safe and effective transit as well that they are currently not getting and transit is dying because of it. I have no illusions on the ways in which society has failed these people, they are largely foster kids who aged out of the system and people who were only a little on the margins but functional until rent went up AGAIN and they literally couldn't afford to have a place to live anymore and spiraled from there. Free transit won't fix that though, the interim period where free transit doesn't function is very real and valid.
Also, seriously though, Luxembourg conservatively has less than a twentieth the poverty rate as the US.
Point blank, that is not an issue caused by free transit. This is the logical equivalent of saying the school system is broken because people keep showing up to them with guns.
Point blank, the inability to deny people entry to transit and to use transit as a mobile shelter is having catastrophic impacts on overall transit use. This is the equivalent of saying the school system is broken because people keep showing up at schools and screaming at people, assaulting people, soiling themselves and the facilities and the staff have no ability to separate them or remove them from the school, so the rest of the students get home schooled or private schooled and effectively don't have access to public school. (Oh yeah, and tons of teachers and staff quit)
They need HELP and a transit system as a shelter and drug safe use space is just about the least efficient way I can imagine to help them and makes it less safe and accessible to everyone else.
You can care and advocate for more than one thing, just so you know. Housing someone is less tax money on you personally than keeping them on the street costs and there are more empty living spaces than there are folks without a home.
But, go ahead and villainize the people with nowhere to go and no other option, they're definitely the problem, aren’t they?
Edit: You’re literally just bitching about your job and asking for this to not affect you personally. That’s a shitty as fuck take on the situation.
I feel like you didn't actually read what I wrote. I ABSOLUTELY WANT THEM TO BE HOUSED AND CARED FOR. I am in no way villainizing them, this situation is not their fault. The reason we have a giant crisis of homelessness and drug use is not because we "let them". The system needs to be fixed so that population can be helped and the numbers falling into that are cut. In the meantime though, we are doing nothing and it doesn't work!
This is specifically a post about doing something. Notice that first box of words in the picture?
Yes... I was in favor of a lot of it... I was trying to educate people that there is more to the issue of free bus fare. Because I'm a transit worker who used to think free bus fare was a no brainer, but now believe it is unworkable without FIRST significantly improving other issues.
I don't understand why having fare free buses would mean that you can't remove disruptive people from the bus. If there is a policy that you can't deny anyone entry to the bus, that seems like a separate issue with a different solution to charging a fare. Seems like there could be rules about how much you can bring with you on the bus to solve the bottle and wagon transit issue for example.
I totally agree that the issue of homelessness needs to be addressed, and I would hope that he would address that issue as well. Seems like the whole "Build affordable housing" thing would be a start. It might be easier for people who want to get off the streets to do so if they could actually afford rent.
well duh. that's not a transit issue, that's a shelter issue.
Agreed, the problem comes when the issue gets pushed from the shelter system onto the transit system.
Staten Island (the forgotten borough) has a free subway. It works pretty well.
Never been let alone worked in Staten Island, couldn't tell you if there's more to the story there or not. Sounds great though, hope it stays great. (I do think islands have a decent ability to be insulated from some amount of societal problems that tend to accumulate in city centers, I know the staten island ferry is free but it still may provide some barrier)
Can the subway be fare free aswell?
That's purely done by the MTA and would have to be at the state level. The state legislature and Hochul would have to stop profiting off the subway for that to happen.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying. Is the problem the fare evasion or the disproportionate amount of money spent policing fare evasion, with the collateral benefit of terrorizing the citizenry?
This might be a humor magazine, but I'll be honest on my perspective out here in NJ.
That $30 minimum wage thing scares the living daylights out of me, especially with the congestion pricing still in effect. Raising the minimum wage in the City that far will make the already ridiculous costs in NYC skyrocket. It's going to make it functionally impossible for average people who work outside NYC to regularly go in and do things. You know that business owners aren't going to eat the loss of profits, the prices will just go up to match. Rents will go up, costs will go up. I do respect the idea of trying to get to a living wage. I'd love to see a viable plan, but the best way to do it is to keep all costs down, not massively increase labor costs.
I think the bus idea is a better use of tax money than 90% of what NYC has right now, as long as the funds are focused on maintaining vehicles and paying drivers who perform well, rather than lining some suit's bank account. I don't know if that's going to be possible, but hey, the worst that happens is they try it, it fails, and the buses go back to being fare-based.
It's that wage idea that's going to really, really suck.
He's not going to get $30 minimum wage. He's starting high so he can negotiate to a middle ground. He's not going to be King of NYC. He's doesn't just get what he wants that easily.
Fair enough. He beat the party establishment. If he wins the general, he'll still have to deal with the City establishment. Still, increases in NYC's minimum wage do typically end up hurting those of us stuck in the orbit. So like I said, I'm scared. All I can do is brace for the impact, and hope that the increase in costs don't give NJ business owners ideas about how much more profit they can gouge because of the NYC cost for goods and/or services. Note that I don't actually have high hopes on that. If there's a chance they can make more profit, most places won't risk leaving money on the table. They'll raise the prices, and then lower them partway later on so they're still increased but it feels like a discount.
Someone has to pay for the busses, and for the rest of his plans. New York already has more public debt per resident than any other large city in the USA. New York also already has high taxes and a shrinking population. So yeah, I'm worried about where the money will come from. You can say "tax the rich more" but I don't think you'll have easy pickings.
I’ve been to NYC 3 times now, and all 3 times people didn’t pay for the buses, they just got on. The bus driver didn’t even look behind themselves. Making the buses free is just a formality.
The buses I used were always PACKED and in all honesty if every single person paid, the bus would sit there for like 3-4 minutes at the busy stops.
The main shopping district for my neighborhood is 10 blocks away. I don't mind walking there regularly, but there are times when I decide not to go because I don't feel like it. If I could go to the end of my block and jump on a free bus, I would go there 2-3 times a week instead of once.
I would also explore other neighborhoods more often.
Imagine how many buses congestion pricing could fund and how nice it would be to walk through the city with free buses to take you where you wanted to go. How many shops or restaurants you might go to. Maybe the library and a park. Suddenly there's more pedestrian accessible business. Even as a thought experiment it seems like it's worth the risk
Someone? How about the millions of fucking people that live there. That's a crazy thought.
as a non-american looking from outside, if NYC already taxed the rich for a lot, then to me the next sensible logical thing for the mayor to do is manage the apparently already lots of money to better use and making his platform come true. to me whatever NYC is doing that sounds like mismanagement of tax funds
I suspect a lot of NYCs liabilities are in strong union-negotiated pensions for retired police, transit, sanitation workers. Hard to get out from under those without really hurting people. The difficulty with taxing rich people is that they can easily change their tax residency to just outside NYC where plenty of counties will give them a big break on income taxes.
Mamdani's proposal is to raise taxes on any company doing business in NYC. They wouldn't be able to just change residency, they'd have to stop doing business in New York entirely.
NYC has a city income tax that's hard to avoid if you're doing well and easy to avoid if you're not.
Thanks for the context.
Got a source on that? Given that it's by far the most populous one, with more than twice the population of LA (when counting within municipal limits only), and as you say has relatively high taxes, the total public spending would have to dwarf that of most STATES for your claim to be anywhere near true.
Which is offset by some of it going towards middle- and working class people having to pay much less for some vital goods and services than in places with a more regressive tax system where the bulk of the revenue comes from things like sales tax and hardly any is spent where it's most needed.
So you're saying that FEWER people using mass transit fare-free costs MORE? 🤔
Other than the obvious answer that you reject out of hand for no reason in the next sentence, here's one
Cops. An absolutely ludicrous $5.5b/y is spent on the paramilitary group/mercenaries for the rich and powerful, terrorists for everyone else known as the NYPD.
The people of New York aren't only paying a premium for the dubious honor of having one of the most oppressive and racist police forces in the world AT HOME. The NYPD also conducts "counterterrorism", training and other operations in Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the fascist apartheid regime known as Israel, Qatar, Australia, and several European countries.
Call me crazy, but if I lived in New York, I would rather my tax dollars go to poor people being able to afford going to work and school than to exporting state terrorism and helping despotic governments oppress and suppress disfavored ethnic and religious groups.
Don't let a little thing like fact checking get in the way of an emotional racist outburst!
Now that a progressive beat a centrist in a high-profile contest where the party establishment tried and failed to stop him, the talking points identical to republican propaganda come out.
Yeah, someone has to pay for it all - the WEALTHY people and corporations who benefit by the infrastructure. They get all the rewards of the system, but they expect someone else to pay to maintain it, too?
If they need to pay half of their fortunes to keep the other half, they'll be just fine. If they refuse to cooperate, we'll just take it all.
The wealthy have a choice for the next stage:
Trickle Up Economics, in which they'll still end up with the money in the end, but it greases the economy along the way,
OR
Robin Hood Economics - Take from the rich and give to the poor. The problem with this one is that it will be VERY uncomfortable for the wealthy.
I'm good with either one.
Okay so you didn't even do a iota of fact checking here. It's growing. And it always has.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/23083/new-york-city/population
You’re already paying for it, you get that, right? The thing is that EVERYBODY needs to be paying and the ones that have the most bend over backwards so that they can give nothing back. The fact that you say what you’re saying while New York is host to some of the most wealth in the entire world is a disturbing illustration of the problems and solutions at hand.
That's where actually taxing the rich comes to play.