The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

     

The NY State Capitol Building in Albany, Thomas Edison and his light bulb and the new CFL bulbs (right).

The Ever Burgeoning NY State Budget

One of the reasons why life in New York is so expensive and why government is so dysfunctional is the never ending spending and the constant increases in the budgets at just about every possible governmental level.

Let’s take a look at our state budget as an example. When Mario Cuomo became governor in 1983 the state budget was $42 billion. When he left office in 1995 the budget grew to $60 billion. George Pataki got off to a decent start by actually cutting spending and the size of the budget through 1998 but by ’99 the budget surged and kept growing each year of his 12 year reign to end at $81 billion in 2007. Now you might think with the economy collapsing and the world seeming to cave in after ’07 that the budget would have seen some kind of a decrease, but you would be mistaken. Thanks to Obama stimulus money and the “Millionaire’s Tax” on those earning over $200,000, the budget was able to grow.

During the Eliot Spitzer-David Paterson years from 2008-2011 the budget grew each year, settling in at $85 billion in 2011. The 2011 budget had cuts over 2010 (which was more like $87 billion) but by the time Andrew Cuomo took office we were still at $85 billion. While the 2012 budget is pretty much flat with ’11, projections are for the numbers to reach $90 billion by 2015.

In a masterful “redistribution of the wealth” which would make the Occupy Wall Street and Obama people proud, thanks to a $2 billion tax increase on individuals earning over $1 million and couples earning over $2 million a year (granted, there are only 30,000 of these folks, but these are the people who make jobs and investment happen) about $690 million of that figure will be funneled back to the middle class as tax cuts, some $250 million of the $2 billion is being allocated to reduce the hated MTA tax on small businesses (those firms doing more than $1.2 million a year will still be forking over the dough) and non-profits and $140 million on some business tax cuts, upstate flood relief and an expensive youth jobs program. The remaining billion raised from the wealthy will go into school aid (not to bring down any of our residential or commercial property taxes, why would anyone want to do that?) and more Medicaid spending.

The State Operating Funds Budget, adjusted for inflation, excluding Medicaid (which is a whole different albatross mandated heavily by the Federal government) shot up by 43 percent under Mario Cuomo, 35 percent under George Pataki and only five percent during the Spitzer-Paterson years.

According to E.J. McMahon at the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy “the growth in the state budget will never be tamed unless and until Cuomo and the Legislature address the structural drivers of growth, which include public employee pensions and benefits, costly capital contracting guidelines and the nation’s most bloated Medicaid program.” A great percentage of state spending are transfers to local governments and school districts and unless budgetary restraint and reform is implemented across all local levels, there will be never ending upward pressure from localities for ever more milk from the public teat.

Hardly anywhere in any level of government in New York do we see any kind of surgical cutting of budgets to a point where spending declines in real dollars by appreciable amounts. It is taken as a matter of faith (or fate) that budgets will increase every year. Democrats, generally feel that tax rates aren’t high enough, especially on anyone earning above six figures and “redistributing the wealth” is not seen as a permutation of Marxism but as some right and entitlement by Liberal legislators who’ve appointed themselves as arbiters of how much money anyone with a modicum of success in life ought to be able to retain. This kind of hostile environment towards success and basic unfairness to those who’ve worked hard and accomplished something (and let’s not get started on all the prohibitive “death taxes” that hit your heirs when you pass from this earth) only serves to continue to feed the ever growing populations of Florida, Texas, Arizona and other sunny tax-free climes. New York: Known as a successful exporter of successful people and builder of other states’ economies by sending forth our well-to-do into their midst.

Seeing The Light 

Last week as part of a $1 trillion spending bill, Congress gave a one year reprieve to the Edison-invented incandescent light bulb. Back in 2007, the Democrat Congress passed a bill that would have banned these bulbs as of New Year’s Day 2012. The new Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (CFL’s) are about five times as expensive as old-time incandescents and although CFL’s consume a lot less electricity, a lot of folks really dislike the light they give off and more importantly, are wary over the fact that CFL’s, while purporting to help the environment, actually contain a highly toxic and dangerous substance – mercury – which if you drop and shatter a CFL, your home becomes a biohazard – especially with children around.

The outright ban on incandescent bulbs is as unreasonable as a ban on alcohol. Let people decide for themselves how to light all or part of their homes and let the free marketplace decide as different formats compete for consumers’ spending. If the CFL is destiny, the incandescent will go the way of the VCR or the 8-Track player, but just like a lot of us like to cook with gas (or even barbeque with charcoal) instead of nuking food, we ought as responsible adults to be able to decide what to put into our bedside lamps by ourselves. Banning these bulbs is like banning candles and is just plain silly. Let’s push for a permanent repeal on the incandescent bulb ban.