This is ClockTowerTenants 100th post, a minor milestone for those keeping track of such things, but it’s going to be a kind of “kids get off my lawn” rant so if that bores you just stop reading here.
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Thanks.
For those still reading, I want to say right upfront I’m a big fan of the MTA. I know... I know, that’s not a popular stance, but I think what they do day-in day-out while we vandalize our own transit system ($2million in damage last year alone) is amazing, and I’ve said that here before.
But the local news these days is full of ominous predictions of a pending and significant fare hike. In the past I’ve had no problem with this. Costs go up, then so do prices. It’s an endless, unavoidable cycle in a free market economy.
But this recession is different. I’ve been through recessions before and watched the economy slowly regather itself and rebound a mirror image of what it was a couple years earlier. This recession isn’t doing that. It’s stalled and even shrinking further by some measures. I think the digital revolution is a large part of this and the jobs we are losing in old media are not coming back, but that’s a topic for another time.
What interests me today is this fare hike, and how it will impact on the average New York family of four struggling to keep rent paid and still somehow get food on the table each night. The average family is hurting. Essential costs like food, shelter and insurance are climbing without end but wages are flat and frightening layoffs are all around.
Monthly budgets are already tight to the point of fracture so just a $.25 increase in each fare is not doable. A family of four riding daily for work or recreation would pay a dollar extra one way, $2.00 a day round trip or $60 pretax dollars extra a month, another $720 a year in just the $.25 increase assuming 8 one-way trips per day. Even if I’m pessimistic by half, a $360 a year increase over the already $2.25 fare represents real money to a family already clipping grocery coupons while the MTA exec’s commute to work in freshcut flower scented limo’s. Over 8,000 MTA workers earned in excess of $100,000 last year.
That’s almost 12% of the total MTA workforce.
Now I’m no Socialist. I do not begrudge hard workers doing well. I’ve been a self-employed capitalist my whole life but something about this proposed fare increase within the unprecedented context of Iraq, Afghanistan and the deepest economic recession since the crash of ‘29 strikes me as wrong at the moment. People need jobs, not MTA fare hikes. Maybe it’s finally time to cut back on the MTA’s freshcut flower and limo budget. I’m just sayin’.
You are welcome and encouraged to leave your thoughts.
Yeah, times are tough and we're all struggling, garden-variety flowers and limos aside, but if the MTA's idea of overhauling the system and laying off transit workers to cut costs entails having remaining workers at least doubling their annual salaries to the tune of $600 million spent by the agency in overtime, then really, what was the point? Cut jobs and keep costs high? Great job.
ReplyDeleteAs your ode to metro suggests, however, icy cold air and transportation for under $3 a head is still a good deal, but not if the system is crumbling beneath our feet and funds aren't allocated properly. And people shouldn't have to choose between being able to afford getting to work/school and being able to make rent/ eat/ survive.
Ugh, so frustrating.
At least it'll be good impetus to get me walking more.
/endrant
I just purchased a bicycle. :-)
ReplyDeleteReally.
Nice. Wanna go for a ride sometime? =P
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the payroll tax that employers in 12 New York counties pay for the MTA, and the increase in car registration, licensing etc. fees that also go to the MTA. I drive a car. I pay for it, and the gas that goes in it and the toll roads I cross. I don't want to subsidize the MTA on top of all that.
ReplyDeleteWell of course you don’t, but you are on the wrong side of history, dear. NYC is the second greenest place on earth after only Tokyo. More people achieve more here with fewer resources in heat, electricity and fossil fuels and fewer per capita emissions than anywhere else in the country. Mass transit is inevitably our future. A person driving an automobile is not only comparatively filthy to the fuel efficient bus or subway, it’s also a taxable, suspendible privilege and not a right. Just as cigarette tax is being used to offset medical and insurance costs, expect the pollution from private vehicle ownership to increasingly underwrite public mass transit, just as it ethically should be.
ReplyDelete:-P