This analogy being appropriate would be like a person saying...well nothing really cause it's not appropriate.
You've been pooping on him since his election being nothing but cynical in what he says he'll accomplish.
There was a budget deficit of 12 BILLION.
New York Mayor Mamdani Applauded for Closing $12 Billion Budget Deficit Without Austerity Measures | Common Dreams
The state helped him with 30%. That means 60-70% he managed to deal with.
And yet you still poop on his efforts and minimize them by comparing him to a nepo kid.....a wonderfully capitalist example.
Common Dreams isn't really an objective source (hence the reason why I cited the NBC NY article), they're a collectivist slanted outlet that will likely shine a positive light on any collectivist politician.
Here's the key details that they're leaving out (one of them I already touched on, but I'll re-list it again)
The details:
--$8 billion in total state assistance over two years (Hochul/Albany), including $4 billion in new gap-closing support — $352 million in direct aid, $3.2 billion from programs requiring state authorization, $500 million in new revenue.
--More than $1 billion in savings came through delaying the state's mandated cap on class sizes. (delaying the enforcement of a self-imposed rule that was going to create part of the deficit, and then claiming it as a savings, is a bit of the creative accounting)
--$2 billion+ from pension amortization (restructuring payments — i.e., kicking them down the road).
So the bulk of the deficit closure came from state aid and accounting changes, not from Mamdani's own cost-cutting or revenue generation.
So, to expound on my earlier analogy.
I'd be like if I said "Look I paid off my credit card debt and got my finances in good shape for the upcoming year!"
And the mechanisms I used for that were:
- Got a big check from mom & dad
- Decided not to buy that new car I originally was planning on buying
- Got a debt consolidation loan so I could have lower payments now, and push the responsibility of paying it off a few years down the road
While there may be some truth to that, I think you would actually find that workers like this are MORE willing to talk about "making some shifts" like this if they ALSO see the rich having to pay more.
The previous system where everything falls on the worker to sacrifice, well that makes them reactionary if they don't see rich people sacrificing more for a system that has such an outrageous benefit plan for JUST them.
If you think "Hey I see that rich person is going to be paying more" is going to make any public sector union employee happy about getting less OT money, then I'll assume you haven't personally known any American public sector union employees. Perhaps that's a difference between Canada and the US (I know the culture is a little different between private sector unions like the CAW vs. UAW as well -- having known people in both).
Having one side of the family that were union guys, being able to milk some OT for extra cash is one of the perks they'll nonchalantly discuss.
Public sector overtime reform is one of the most consistently failed, and fought back against, budget reform approaches in American municipal government. (even in NYC, Deblasio and Adams both tried it as well)
Ample OT opportunities are often written into those contracts. You can't reform it by management or executive edict. You have to negotiate it away and the public sector unions have no incentive to part with it.
