Some parallels between Detroit and NYC ( from the article):
* Detroit owes $5.7 billion for retiree health care. New York owes $88.2 billion — and has no money squirreled away. That’s $20 billion more than Detroit when adjusted for NYC’s larger population (NYC is 12 times bigger).
* Pensions? New York owed pensioners $69.9 billion more than it set aside as of last year’s annual report. Adjusted for population, that’s $28 billion more than Detroit owes.
* Bondholder debt? New York owes $77.3 billion. Detroit beats NYC there by about $34 billion — but even that should be a warning, not a comfort. People kept loaning until it was too late to maintain the illusion that Detroit could afford its retirement benefits — and now both groups will suffer.
What about budget deficits?
* Detroit can’t balance its annual budget because it must spend one-third of its revenues on health retirement benefits and debt. Well, New York’s budget has run an operating deficit six of the past seven years (with the shortfalls covered by pre-2008 surpluses).
And NYC spends one third of the budget on health and retirement benefits and debt.
* Detroit lost the auto industry. And New York, half a decade after Lehman Bros. collapsed, is still missing more than 30,000 jobs from its premier industry, finance. The sector’s ranks remain down 7.5 percent.
That’s important, because finance still provides 28.9 percent of New York’s income from wages — and we need the taxes on those wages to keep city services up so the world’s global elite don’t decamp with their cash.
* One difference -— NYC’s median household income, about $51,270 (thanks to Manhattan), is nearly twice Detroit’s.
The difference between NYC and Detroit, is that there is tremendous wealth in NYC that can (and will) be taxed to increase revenues - at least in the short run. There is no way for Detroit to increase revenues - there is almost nobody left with any money to tax.
While it’s true that there aren’t enough taxpayers in the world to solve the cesspool that is Detroit (and Chicago, LA, Philly, NYC etc.), as a member of the taxpaying chumps of the country, there are also too many tax evaders in the country, be they corporations big or small, your friendly neighborhood secretary, or black conservative underground restaurant owning tax evaders.
And while Detroit is a cesspool (and I hope when it finally gets to the sucking sound around the drain, it takes a bunch of unions, union-types, criminal elements, and commies with it), it will be deemed too big to fail and the temporary fix will AGAIN come out of our pockets.