When you want to know the effects of heavy-handed government’s tax and spend philosophy, look at the city’s middle class and the extremes of its citizen’s income.
Take New York City as an example, but it can be any U.S. city that is reasonably well run.
There are the very rich small minority, and the very poor, usually on welfare and Medicaid.
Then there is the influential, true middle class: The civil service employees and teachers, transit and sanitation workers, and other strong union members. They are the ones with salaries that are much higher than those that often prevail in private industry. And those with generous retirement benefits, the amounts of which are often hidden from the rest of the city taxpayers.
Retirement benefits of city workers often are city budget-busters. Moreover, they tend to influence city politics. They are the ones who control politicians and the votes.
The rest are the voiceless middle class. These are often private sector entrepreneurs, non-union professionals, shopkeepers and self-employed, along with small pensioners, all trying to make ends meet, amid taxes that hurt them proportionally the hardest.
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