Gothamist: Budget Fallout For NYC

book worm

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 17:59:59 -0500

Most (not all, but most) well-educated people had a lot of help paying for college from their parents (not just tuition, but housing, co-signing loans, etc). What if their parents were poor? Tough luck: a lifetime of low-paying jobs. I personally think the poverty issue can be solved through higher education. That way, the hard-working, motivated poor can learn the skills necessary to have high-paying jobs (and therefore not be poor anymore). For every one lazy poor person, there's a great number of hard-working poor who'd love a shot at rising through the ranks. They simply don't have equal access to the opportunity to advance. I have seen unmotivated people mooch off of the welfare system. But trust me, what kind of unmotivated mooch would study hard to get good grades at a free university?

L'Emmerdeur

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 16:40:48 -0500

That's right. I spent 20 years in school, paying attention and doing my homework, while the class bullies screwed around and harassed me, and now I'm expected to forego the rewards of my hard work to help out those same bullies because they are too lazy to do it themselves. Taking more money from rich or poor will solve NOTHING. This is not an issue of receipts, it is an issue of unfair distribution. The problem here is New York's poor people. You see, Bush loves poor people in the Red States, because they are WHITE poor people who vote for him. A lot of poor people in New York City are BLACK, and vote Democrat, so when New York's taxes (most from corporations and wealthy people, BTW) are taken by Pataki and Bush, they are "redistributed" to poor white folks in Pataki-loving upstate New York and in Bush-loving Red States. So the poor people getting screwed here are black urban poor. If the taxes paid by New Yorkers remained in New York, there would be enough to go around for everyone, and corporate taxes could be lowered, which would attract more businesses here and lower the crippling unemployment rate. Unfortunately, the Democrats have done the same thing in the past, funny enough, because they know they've got New York in the bag, so they can go ahead and screw us out of our tax dollars. This has led to an interesting state of affairs, a de facto "taxation without representation". We all know how we can solve that problem.

rob

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 15:32:17 -0500

Pissed Off is totally right. Bush should suck it up and raise taxes on the rich. They should helping their fellow brother instead of blowing it on Per Se dinners and LV bags. Killings like the deFresne incident will become more common if the poor don't have basketball programs and subsidized housing to give them help.

Pissed Off New Yorker

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 12:46:49 -0500

I love how New York, arguably the bluest of the blue states, literally subsidizes the programs of the red states, yet you only really hear red staters bitching about taxes. Roughly 20% of New York's contributions are literally sucked away simply to compensate for the percentages that many red states don't feel like paying. Expect the crime in NYC to noticably rise by the end of this decade.