Thursday, January 13, 2011
Only the paranoid can survive without going crazy: Are jobs still the priority?
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The changes of regime in Albany and Washington have come with an emphasis on cost savings that threatens the No One priority, jobs.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced an ambitious program that will cut the costs of state and local government agencies and authorities by 20 percent, and guess how? If you said by terminating employment, you were right. This doe not mean he’s not right, the agencies are bloated, and the probable cost of unfunded retirement and medical benefits guaranteed for NYS government employees by vote hungry politicians may be in the high $billions, money that New York cannot possibly raise over the life span time involved. He is right, businesses and qualified people are leaving NYS, to go to lower cost and better opportunities, as taxes – real estate and income, highest in the nation – need be cut severely, to make the business environment viable. Commerce has no mercy, and nowadays can go wherever the cost is less, SC or Mexico or China, and if your products are overpriced because of excessive costs, the business will not survive, and its employees will join the army of the unemployed.
To interject national thinking, the recently reported great industrial profits and market values for US corporations are heavily weighted by global business. GM and others are making more money abroad than domestically, with no impact for American workers. The 103,00 new jobs in December 2010 , reducing unemployment to 9.4 percent, were 4/5ths in health care and hospitality, still leaving 15M Americans jobless. The 1990-01 and 2000 recessions took 23 and 38 months to recover, and those figures may extend to 72 to 90 months for the present situation, as a NYTimes survey shows.
Returning to NYS, that brings up the need for creating new opportunities in our state of dwindling population (we lost two Congressional seats, remember?). Wind power farms have started to create low cost energy, desirable because gasoline costs are predicted to reach reaching the $5 a gallon cost in our lifetime. The demand for oil is high, because more countries are industrializing, and the Gulf of Mexico production has been curtailed since the BP disaster. On Jan. 3 the Obama administration cleared the path for resumption of deep-water drilling, but that will take time. NYS unfortunately has miles of fallow land op north, and the noisy and unsightly electricity-producing windmills, out of sight and sound and radiation impact (that bugaboo, is it real?) may be one resource, better than the NYS water supply-impacting drilling for natural gas. Attracting new industries to NYS is difficult; we have the education and people to accommodate the requirements, but the costs! Anyway, we have to keep thinking.
Cutting Medicaid costs by $2 billion is another Cuomo solution. Is the savings gained by removing abuses, or will the state costs be shifted? In any event, it will result in reduced care for the needy, and public assistance cost increases. However... a $10B budget gap is ahead of us in the next year’s $136B budget and needs to be solved, else it will be $14B the next year, and increasing amounts thereafter, so…
Cuomo also wants to create three commissions to implement the necessary changes, and will spend $250M to consolidate local government services for the 10,000 municipalities and NYS agencies (state banking, insurance and consumer protection agencies will be consolidated), and another $250M for
combining and improving school districts.
The changes in NYS legislature, returning the Senate leadership to the Republicans also threatens the rent control legislation, particularly affecting our Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village community, as highlighted in Steven Sanders’s article last week. This column reiterates his call for community support for Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, who will lead the fight in the legislature, to extend and protect the tenant/landlord laws, and to Al Doyle’s Tenants Association. The discourse will be more difficult this year, in view of the budget struggles and the Republican takeover of the NYS Senate. It is by no means a certainty that Governor Andrew Cuomo, in view of his declared intent to work for a viable NYS economy, cutting government expenses and increasing income, can be expected to be a wholehearted advocate for rent control as we know it. This may well be a subject for compromises that need be thought out, on three or even six levels of alternatives. International politics is not the ultimate in negotiations, we have the potential right here in River City.
As to my favorite topic of books, the bad state of Borders puts some considerable doubt on that company’s ability to take over our neighbor, Barnes and Noble. Shucks! If the great financiers cannot save the simple industries supporting knowledge, judgment and wisdom; maybe we the people will have to do it. Books are still wonderful gifts to yourself and to friends.
The changes of regime in Albany and Washington have come with an emphasis on cost savings that threatens the No One priority, jobs.
Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced an ambitious program that will cut the costs of state and local government agencies and authorities by 20 percent, and guess how? If you said by terminating employment, you were right. This doe not mean he’s not right, the agencies are bloated, and the probable cost of unfunded retirement and medical benefits guaranteed for NYS government employees by vote hungry politicians may be in the high $billions, money that New York cannot possibly raise over the life span time involved. He is right, businesses and qualified people are leaving NYS, to go to lower cost and better opportunities, as taxes – real estate and income, highest in the nation – need be cut severely, to make the business environment viable. Commerce has no mercy, and nowadays can go wherever the cost is less, SC or Mexico or China, and if your products are overpriced because of excessive costs, the business will not survive, and its employees will join the army of the unemployed.
To interject national thinking, the recently reported great industrial profits and market values for US corporations are heavily weighted by global business. GM and others are making more money abroad than domestically, with no impact for American workers. The 103,00 new jobs in December 2010 , reducing unemployment to 9.4 percent, were 4/5ths in health care and hospitality, still leaving 15M Americans jobless. The 1990-01 and 2000 recessions took 23 and 38 months to recover, and those figures may extend to 72 to 90 months for the present situation, as a NYTimes survey shows.
Returning to NYS, that brings up the need for creating new opportunities in our state of dwindling population (we lost two Congressional seats, remember?). Wind power farms have started to create low cost energy, desirable because gasoline costs are predicted to reach reaching the $5 a gallon cost in our lifetime. The demand for oil is high, because more countries are industrializing, and the Gulf of Mexico production has been curtailed since the BP disaster. On Jan. 3 the Obama administration cleared the path for resumption of deep-water drilling, but that will take time. NYS unfortunately has miles of fallow land op north, and the noisy and unsightly electricity-producing windmills, out of sight and sound and radiation impact (that bugaboo, is it real?) may be one resource, better than the NYS water supply-impacting drilling for natural gas. Attracting new industries to NYS is difficult; we have the education and people to accommodate the requirements, but the costs! Anyway, we have to keep thinking.
Cutting Medicaid costs by $2 billion is another Cuomo solution. Is the savings gained by removing abuses, or will the state costs be shifted? In any event, it will result in reduced care for the needy, and public assistance cost increases. However... a $10B budget gap is ahead of us in the next year’s $136B budget and needs to be solved, else it will be $14B the next year, and increasing amounts thereafter, so…
Cuomo also wants to create three commissions to implement the necessary changes, and will spend $250M to consolidate local government services for the 10,000 municipalities and NYS agencies (state banking, insurance and consumer protection agencies will be consolidated), and another $250M for
combining and improving school districts.
The changes in NYS legislature, returning the Senate leadership to the Republicans also threatens the rent control legislation, particularly affecting our Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village community, as highlighted in Steven Sanders’s article last week. This column reiterates his call for community support for Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, who will lead the fight in the legislature, to extend and protect the tenant/landlord laws, and to Al Doyle’s Tenants Association. The discourse will be more difficult this year, in view of the budget struggles and the Republican takeover of the NYS Senate. It is by no means a certainty that Governor Andrew Cuomo, in view of his declared intent to work for a viable NYS economy, cutting government expenses and increasing income, can be expected to be a wholehearted advocate for rent control as we know it. This may well be a subject for compromises that need be thought out, on three or even six levels of alternatives. International politics is not the ultimate in negotiations, we have the potential right here in River City.
As to my favorite topic of books, the bad state of Borders puts some considerable doubt on that company’s ability to take over our neighbor, Barnes and Noble. Shucks! If the great financiers cannot save the simple industries supporting knowledge, judgment and wisdom; maybe we the people will have to do it. Books are still wonderful gifts to yourself and to friends.
Labels: only the paranoid can survive without going crazy
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 9:00 AM 
