New York In Financial Fantasyland
/The blue state progressive political model consists of an endless list of government spending and redistribution programs, expected shortly to deliver perfect fairness and justice among all people, all financed by an assumed ever-increasing gusher of tax revenues. Then along comes the coronavirus: the productive economy gets intentionally suppressed, tax revenues plummet, and then what? Are we now expected to cut back on the government programs so recently touted as the sine qua non of human moral advancement? Worse, are public servants — those selfless individuals giving their lives to the righteous cause of human advancement through government spending — now to be laid off? Or have their pay or benefits reduced?
All of the blue states are currently facing this circumstance to greater or lesser degree, but none more so than my home state of New York. A June Report from researchers at Arizona State and Old Dominion Universities, cited at Bloomberg here, projected an annualized average decline in tax revenues among the states of 20%, but with New York leading all states with a projected 40% decline in tax revenues. Even if the decline turns out to be well less than the 40%, we’re still talking about a large part of the support for most-expensive-in-the-nation spending programs in areas like Medicaid, housing, and K-12 education. What’s the plan, Governor Cuomo?
Good New Yorker that he is, Cuomo’s brain is just incapable of contemplating substantial cuts to state spending or the state workforce, even in areas like Medicaid and K-12 education where our state spends double or more per capita the average of the other states. Nor are meaningful tax increases really an option — we’ve basically already maxed out on the potential for squeezing big money out of a handful of the richest citizens. So there’s really only one option: the federal government just has to step up and pay our bills.
Cuomo laid out the “necessity” of a complete federal bailout at a press conference on Wednesday (July 29). From the Washington Examiner, July 30:
Cuomo sent a letter to the state’s congressional delegation urging them to push for $500 billion in unrestricted state aid that the National Governor’s Association is calling on Congress to pass, and he wants them to fight for every dollar they can get for New York. With no federal funding, the state faces 20 percent cuts to education, health care and funding for cities and counties.
Cuomo did not mention that a 20% cut to K-12 education spending in New York would bring per student spending from more than double the national average to just around 60% above the national average. And why exactly should taxpayers in the other states that spend far less now be required to cover New York’s exorbitant bills? Fortunately, no reporter was impolite enough to pose that question to the Governor.
Maybe even better than the Governor at playing the bureaucratic “Washington Monument” game is the head of the MTA, Patrick Foye. (For those unfamiliar with the term, the “Washington Monument” game is the classic bureaucrat’s strategy to avoid budget cuts. When threatened with any funding reduction, the smart bureaucrat responds by threatening to implement the reduction in the way that is most visible and most painful to the public — “We’ll have to close the Washington Monument!” — instead of, for example, eliminating excess personnel who accomplish nothing at all productive.). In the current situation, Foye is making an art form of the Washington Monument strategy. From NY1, July 22, “MTA Warns of Fare Hikes and Service Cuts”:
The MTA is banking on a federal bailout. It already got nearly $4 billion in the first round of the federal government's coronavirus package, and the MTA now needs another round just to make it through the year. The effects of the pandemic will be felt in the years to come, with deficits exceeding $16 billion through 2024. That could mean painful decisions like big fare and toll hikes, deep service cuts and more borrowing.
Isn’t this the time to ask question like: Why does it take two people to operate a subway train in New York when the international standard is one? Why does New York’s transit system have hundreds of people sitting in booths making change — an easily automatable job? Why are New York’s subway construction costs a multiple of international standards?
It’s just so easy to claim a piece of the infinite free federal loot, instead of asking any hard questions like these, or getting into a fight with intransigent unions.
And to prove that we are dealing with infinite resources and no need at all for concern about costs, New York went through just last week with a bidding process seeking to procure some 2500 megawatts of offshore wind energy. No word yet on the price we’re going to be paying for this particular boondoggle. But Jonathan Lesser in today’s New York Post has prices from two other recent offshore wind auctions in New York: $99 and $110 per MWh, or about double the cost of wholesale power from a new natural gas plant. And that’s before you account for the costs of intermittency from a wind project (which include extra transmission facilities and backup from fossil fuel plants and/or batteries); and before you account for rapid deterioration of these offshore facilities in the corrosive salt air; and before you account for the costs of decommissioning.
As I’ve said before, the best thing that could happen to New York would be for the Congress to give it absolutely nothing further in the way of bailouts. That is the only way that any reductions in our out-of-control costs will ever occur. If such reductions are not forced now by necessity, I can’t see how they will ever occur.