And some people said that “socialism doesn’t have any incentives”
I can’t tell if this is a joke, satire, or sarcasm. Nothing in the post indicates anything related to socialism, nor are there any incentives mentioned. The mayor simply offered fair compensation for labor. I would even say that $40 an hour is still a relatively small amount of money.
What did Democrats do? The usual?
It says in the op photo, they paid people to shovel snow
My bad. I thought he was a socialist.
Cool but don’t you guys have machines for this?
Asking from Montréal — we might just be more sophisticated with snow removal because of our reality.
Can’t really use plows or snowblowers on NYC sidewalks. Too many trashbags and sidewalk sheds.
It also just doesn’t make sense to invest in huge levels of any of that. How often does NYC get that much snow buildup compared to Montreal? It’s almost certainly not worth the maintenance and storage on a shit load of snow blowers, for something that might get one use a year.
Its fucking painful that its headline worthy that taxes were used for the betterment of the places they were paid in.
Yeah hate to live in a world where expected behaviour becomes our paradise.
They aren’t even used to bomb brown people overseas 😡
Or given to Netanyahu to bomb brown people.
Don’t worry, ya boy Trump has you covered. They’re bombing brown people side by side with Netanyahu rn
Not for THIS tax money, but American tax money still.
Maybe.
Taxes rarely get any good propaganda, though. I don’t mind news stories like this being plastered everwhere if it means people will start believing their government can do something for them again.
And some of that money will come back and the cycle will continue.
A basic thing that capitalists can’t grasp.
They can grasp it, but they do not care. Sidewalks being cleared doesn’t affect you if you are driving everywhere.
Or privileged enough to WFH/pause working when there weather turns.
Outside NY, the MAGA faithful condemn this and would rather have the money diverted to billionaires who will one day descend as prophesised, to give them their land of milk and honey
$30/hr is insanely low for NYC. I guarantee I couldn’t live on it there…
I mean… It’s temporary snow removal. Let’s call it seasonal. So like not full time.
$30/hour is about $60K/year.
That’s an absolutely livable wage in NYC. You might need a roommate, but it’s easily achievable. I lived there for almost a decade (recently), but since you shouldn’t trust random people on the internet, here’s the MIT living wage calculator:
- Manhattan: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061
- Brooklyn: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36047
- Bronx: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36005
- Staten Island: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36085
- Queens: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36081
As a single adult with no kids, you’re just barely under the “living” wage in most of those, but well above “poverty” in all of them. In any borough, with a roommate, you’re cruising comfortably (see the “2 Adults (Both Working): 0 Children” column). In the Bronx, as a single adult with no kids, $30 is above the living wage mark.
It’s also worth noting, people may live outside the city, but take a train or subway in for work. Living just outside the city brings costs down quite a bit.
I don’t know if you have ever seen snow before but… this isn’t a full time job.
Wait wait wait. You’re telling me that if you offer fair compensation for labor the people performing that labor will do the job they’re hired for?
Son of a gun. Who’d of thunk it!
Roosevelt did the same thing too when soldiers came back from the war and couldn’t find work and their government Bonds were expired. He designed a lot of unification projects like bridges and all sorts of projects while those bridges are beautiful and they’re still standing today showing that we don’t have to do things cheap and we can still help people that’s grades are under that our governments to do that invest in their people.
Roosevelt as in Franklin Delano Roosevelt? He was already dead when the war was over. His successor, Harry Truman, could have implemented this policy?
New york city has a 25billion dollar budget deficit.
Id need to see data on the cost comparison w alternatives.
Public Works is a net-generator of revenue for a municipality. They allow businesses to operate, which increases tax revenue.
The alternative to hiring people to shovel the snow is having business halt and the city taking a massive loss in tax revenue, to say nothing of the social, economic, and public safety benefits.
That’s not the only alternative. In other countries the building owner is required to clear the snow in front of their building, and it generally works quite well. The American version would be to allow people to sue building owners for damages if they don’t clear the snow.
I’m sure there are other alternatives. Not saying they are automatically better, but asking to compare them is not a crazy demand.
A few problems with that solution:
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If the only people clearing the streets are doing it in front of buildings they control - how do the people who need tondo the cleaning get to the building to clean it?
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This was an exceptional storm, not a weekly occurrence, and proving damages for a single day will be difficult. And a fine won’t mean much 4 months from now when they pay up.
What NYC needed was an immediate fix during a crisis.
If every tenant can sue their landlord for lost wages for the day, the landlords themselves will shell out the 30, or even 50 bucks to clear the snow, on short notice. Again, asking for a serious study (not a lemmy what-if) is not a crazy request, maybe they can be even better prepared next time.
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Tax 1% of the 1% and you instantly make that back. Why argue over pennies?
So how many problems would we solve by taxing your income more?
Now why would that change if the money comes from elsewhere.
I don’t want usa having more money, they just spend it on weapons, ice, and military.
Are you trying to be a jackass or do you want me to actually explain it?
Typical, challenge some ones wafer thin argument so they switch to being a jack ass vs thinking
For an example of how crucial it is too keep roads accessible and decongested, look at the Philippines. Metro Manila is currently losing 3.5 billion pesos PER DAY due to the constant congestion, and is on track for that loss reaching 6 billion. An average company employee might earn somewhere between 20-30k per month there, so 3.5 billion is a lot of money by Filipino measure.
I saw so many people commenting on social media how they have never seen the sidewalks and streets cleared that fast in New York. He is winning people over quickly.
This is great, but I love that he gave the school kids of New York an actual, honest-to-god snow day. No remote class, no logging on.
Nd let’s not forget that there was an economic benefit too that conservatives will ignore. People were able to get out of their house and go spend money thanks to the people who shoveled. People went to work and kept things going.
Conservatives frequently think these things bring no value, and will absolutely mock it on fox news saying “so people can wALk”. But yes, the benefit is they can go keep the economy going.
Its why I don’t understand why they are against things like high speed rail. Its an investment. Every time we connect people together trade happens, and economies grow. Its kind of how that works.
I agree but I think we are currently driving past that place in history where everything is based on buying and selling things for money. The current imbalance of capital is slowly catching on to the rest of the world, not just the ones who’ve known it all along.
Clean energy is another example of an investment which obviously saves money in the long term and also improves the economy in the short term. Conservatives don’t care about that because they don’t care about the long term, and even if they do, they want all of these issues to still be around so they have something to yell about (since apparently voters only care about something being a problem and can’t tell if the ‘solution’ will actually make things better or worse). There’s also a lot of lobbyist money that they can keep on getting by preventing these sorts of investments. If we stopped relying on a couple of oil companies, then those oil companies wouldn’t be able to give the politicians money.
The issue with public transport is that it’s an investment that will pay off in years, not next quarter, or even next election. They don’t give a fuck if it doesn’t benefit them specifically, and right now.
Also, it evens the field. They don’t want this because the bottom having more means they are less above them.
Your last point is probably the most important part, it’s not about money, it’s about classism.
And it’s not a new concept either, it has been proven many times and there’s plenty of case studies. High speed rail too, all over Europe, China and Japan. But when your job has been given to you by an oil company donation…
I assume oil companies broke the brain of the worst americans so now they only want what’s best for oil companies, most of the time without even realising it.
Its so obvious top which is the most annoying thing. Cars are freedom. Well, no, they’re actually a huge liability that cost a small fortune and lose that value, and then you’re tethered to a gas pump forever.
Or I could, I don’t know, take public transit anywhere I wanted to go. You know, freedom to choose other things
Besides that, people are struggling to make ends meet. If the city pays them to do something, that money isn’t just staying in saving accounts. They are going to spend it, likely very very soon.
Plus all the money paid out in wages went back into the local economy for rent, food, etc. It didn’t go to offshore tax havens.
Conservative don’t want to make things better for everyone, they want to make things better for themselves.
This makes them short sighted and only see the money right in front of their face, which in this case, is going into the pockets of people shovelling snow.
They don’t see the benefit because it doesn’t benefit them immediately.
But you can bet your life that they will reap the benefit as they pull themselves up by other peoples bootstraps.
Also those people are getting swole while they shovel snow.
Let’s not forget also, that when you pay people directly they go and spend that money. Businesses cannot have customers if the customers don’t have money. The reason why money is kept so tight is a) blind greed and b) because then people can only afford to patronize Walmart or Amazon, not their local stores.
Conservatives like to act as though raising minimum wage will kill local businesses despite the fact that that is not how that works.
Turns out when people have money to spend they spend across the board, both places like walmart/amazon and also the local stores
I mean, yes, but they have the choice.
Conservatives are stupid, basically. Given a set of facts they will draw back conclusions
It’s an investment to the public, not a direct injection of cash/investment that they will directly benefit from.
Because everything’s a get rich quick scheme or a scam, investments to them are rigging bets on polymarket
I’d love to know what the economic ROI is on paying people that much to clear snow. I bet it’s huge in NYC.
Let’s be real, it’s not that much money. I mean $30/hr is nice, but that’s only when there’s enough snow to be worth cleaning, and only half the year. It’s not like a full-time position paid $30/hr.
So the investment is relatively small, and the benefit is relatively large.
I’ve known several people who love that kind of seasonal/day labor kind of work. They can work and save while the work is there and then do contract/part-time in the off season. It’s not for everyone but some people make it work.
I wonder how it’s set up, can I just put in some hours after my day job or is there a set schedule?
Snow removal is normally an on-call job. There’s no need to work when there’s no snow to remove. It’s not a reliable source of income.
A seasonal job like landscaping or irrigation can be reliable. Snow removal is unfortunately not one of those jobs. It makes sense if you can do multiple similar jobs during the season.
In a city where the vast majority either walk to work, or walk to the subway to get to work, I can’t imagine. We clear roadways in the midwest and no one bats an eye, but clearing sidewalks in a walkable city is crazy to them.
It is because they personally do not walk on the sidewalks and don’t se employees as people and would rather they just trudged through the drifts to thank them for a paycheck.
They do know that trucks move goods around, which they care about.
Therefore roads being cleared is important to the wealthy and sidewalks are not.
What did they mock him for? Too expensive? Won’t work?
Probably both, yeah. They’re not exactly known for being objectively right about things…
How will he ever make a profit?!
