Living Wage as Soviet Plot: Da or Nyet?
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Thursday, Apr 19, 2012
Wikicommons/City Limits
A Soviet propaganda poster from the immediate post-World War II era. In it, a Russian worker resists the lure of consumer luxuries offered by a Western mogul, who is also offering the NATO alliance (that's the document hiding the bayonet-tipped rifle). The quote at the bottom is from Stalin: "The peoples of the world do not want a repeat of the disasters of war."
Mayor Bloomberg does not like a proposal to require some recipients of city subsidies to pay their employees a "living wage." He detests the idea so much, in fact, that he has twice compared it to something out of the Evil Empire, Soviet Russia.
It's a comparison that at least some Soviet scholars take issue with.
The mayor said last week during his regular radio appearance that "the last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn't work out so well."
This echoed his comments in October: "The last time people tried to set rates, basically, was in the Soviet Union, and that didn't work out very well. I don't think we want to go in that direction."
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Related topic categories: The Economy, History, Living Wage
Food Stamp Shortfall Linked to Homelessness
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Wednesday, Apr 11, 2012
Abrahami/Adi Talwar/City Limits
The gap between the typical cost of a family's food and average food stamp benefits may be one reason New York City has seen near-record numbers of families at place like the Department of Homeless Services' PATH intake center (right).
While it doesn't endear him to the food-stamp-hatin' Newt Gingrich crowd, Mayor Bloomberg's expansion of the federal nutrition benefit might rank as one of the signal accomplishments of his mayoralty. From January 2003 to the first month of this year, the number of New Yorkers receiving food stamp benefits increased from 830,000 to more than 1.8 million, a leap of 118 percent.
But a new report by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness finds that food stamps are still having a less beneficial impact than you might think—for reasons beyond Bloomberg's control. The study concludes that the average food stamp benefit covers only part of a family's food bill in New York City, meaning food stamp recipients might still have to choose between dinner and rent.
W
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Related topic categories: Hunger, The Economy
What’s Not to Like About the Cuomo Budget?
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Wednesday, Jan 18, 2012
NYgov/City Limits
Cuomo's budget delays an already postponed increase in the basic welfare grant.
For a budget address, Governor Cuomo's speech on Tuesday spent relatively little time on the nuts and bolts of the state's fiscal 2013 spending plan. Seeking to turn a symbolic page from last year's nasty budget fight, the governor argued that closing New York's $2 billion fiscal hole is a simple matter of eliminating waste and cancelling automatic budget increases. The bulk of the gov's talk was about his "reform agenda" of economic development, government streamlining, avoiding future pension obligations and teacher evaluations.
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Related topic categories: Activism and Volunteerism, NYCHA, Albany, Urban Planning and Policy, Workforce and Labor, Housing and Development, Government, The Economy, Andrew Cuomo, Budget
NYC Area Gets a D for Economic Security
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Wednesday, Dec 14, 2011
Jon Sullivan/City Limits
A fifth of homeowners in the Las Vegas area are seriously at risk of defaulting on their mortgages.
About 1,000 miles of Interstate 40 separate Oklahoma City from Las Vegas. According to a new report, they occupy opposite ends on a gauge of economic security in America's metropolitan areas.
The Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, ranked the 100 most populous metropolitan areas using four criteria: unemployment, housing price trends, rental costs versus average income and the incidence of serious mortgage delinquency.
Oklahoma City, with a 5.5 percent unemployment rate and a 6.6 percent rate of serious mortgage delinquency, topped the chart as most secure. Las Vegas's 13.6 percent unemployment rate and 21.9 percent delinquency score was good for 100th place.
The N
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Related topic categories: The Economy
Poverty Rose Slower than Thought—Is that Good News?
Posted by
Neil deMause
Monday, Nov 7, 2011
SSA/City Limits
USDA statistician Mollie Orshansky created the federal poverty line in 1963. For decades, critics have cited its flaws, but a raft of federal programs still rely on it.
If you've been trying to follow the debate over the
new measure of poverty released by the Census Bureau this morning, you're probably completely confused by now. So far in the last few days we've seen:
On Friday morning, the front page of The New York Times offered up the Census data as a ray of sunshine amid the economic gloom: "Bleak Portrait of Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say," read the headline, with the accompanying story—by longtime Times poverty reporter Jason DeParle and two others—noting that the Census' new Supplemental Poverty Measure would likely make half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappear.
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Related topic categories: The Economy, Poverty
March to Bring Communities of Color to Occupy Wall Street
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Saturday, Nov 5, 2011
Marc Fader/City Limits
At a recent discussion, participants at Occupy Wall Street discussed socialism and capitalism.
Diversity has cut both ways for skeptics of Occupy Wall Street: The lack of ethnic diversity has been one reason to dismiss the people living in Zuccotti Park, while the presence of diverse messages has been another.
At least the first critique could be complicated by a March planned for Monday morning that, its organizers say, will be led by Black and Latino community members as it traces 11 miles from Washington Heights through Harlem on its way to the financial district.
At a Thursday press conference announcing the march, State Sen. Adriano Espaillat brushed off a question about whether the occupiers lack racial diversity. "We feel they speak for all Americans," he said. Referring to low-income New York, he added: "We have been in a constant recession. These conditions are not new for us. Now, more people are keenly aware of it. We want to show solidarity."
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Related topic categories: The Economy, Occupy Wall Street
More Poor People=More Crime? Not Necessarily, Says Report
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Wednesday, Nov 2, 2011
Jarrett Murphy/City Limits
When
City Limits visited New Orleans three years after the federal levee failure that followed Hurricane Katrina, the Crescent City faced the question of whether and how to bring more of its evacuated low-income residents back—and where to put them.
A civic association leader in the traditionally white Lakeview district told us that his neighborhood was not a suitable place for low-income housing. “People want to be around people who are in the same economic category,” he said. “You want someone who’s going to maintain their property the same way you maintain your property, after we’ve made the investment we’ve made.”
A
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Related topic categories: Housing and Development, The Economy, Housing Policy, Poverty
15 Years On, Still No Agreement on Welfare Reform's Impact
Posted by
Neil deMause
Thursday, Sep 29, 2011
Neil deMause/Jarrett Murphy/City Limits
The panelists, clockwise from top left: Bich Ha Pham, Robert Doar, Frances Fox-Piven and Lawrence Mead.
Wednesday's panel on the 15th anniversary of
welfare reform, held at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, was certainly full of heavy hitters on the subject of how the 1996 law has affected American society. The lineup:
- New York City HRA Commissioner Robert Doar, chief proponent of the city's "Work First" welfare policies.
-
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Related topic categories: Environment and Energy, The Economy, Welfare
City Hall Reacts to Jump in Poverty Numbers
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Friday, Sep 23, 2011
At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, New York City braced for a devastating blow—then seemed to duck it.
After the recession ended in late 2009, the city counted itself lucky for having avoiding the degree of pain that other Americans felt. Mayor Bloomberg has pointed with pride to the way New York weathered the downturn, boasting in his 2011 State of the City speech that "New York City entered a national recession later than the rest of the country and now, we have come out of it faster and stronger than the rest of the country."
B
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Related topic categories: The Economy, Poverty
The Cheerios Index: Do the Poor Pay More for Food?
Posted by
Kiera Feldman
Thursday, Sep 22, 2011
Kiera Feldman/City Limits
In our informal survey, bread prices were generally higher in areas with higher rates of poverty.
Last week, the Census Bureau released new data announcing that 15.1 percent of Americans now live in poverty—the highest rate since 1993. According to the New York Coalition Against Hunger (NYCAH), the numbers are about the same in New York State, and the last six years has seen a 56 percent increase in New Yorkers going hungry.
With poverty and hunger on the rise in New York, are the poor paying more for staples like milk and bread? Supermarkets are fewer and farther between in impoverished neighborhoods, making higher prices likely thanks to supply and demand. Using Census data, City Limits went comparison shopping at grocery stores in Brooklyn neighborhoods with some of the highest and lowest poverty rates in the borough.
A
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Related topic categories: Hunger, The Economy, Poverty
