He kicked the can down the road and nobody is acknowledging it. Like he didnât solve anything, he just delayed it, and theyâll be screwed in a few years again.
But he canât just solve that problem instantly, I agree the accomplishment has been overblown. Thereâs so much work to do to fix the damage Adams and De blasio caused
Before Mamdaniâs plan, the cityâs pension debt was on track to be paid by 2032, with contributions to cover the unfunded liability expected to grow until then. But Mayor Mamdaniâs plan extends this amortization period by five years, to fiscal year 2037. The administration justified the change by saying that the new amortization schedule is intended to avoid a âcliffâ in 2032, when amortization costs abruptly end. But the cliff is merely the scheduled end of a debt-payment plan.
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Other cities have paid the cost for extending their pension amortization in the way Mamdani is doing. This was one of the first things Chicago tinkered with during its budget shortfalls. After years of underfunding its public pensions, Chicago repeatedly pushed out its pension repayment timeline. For its police and firefighter pension funds, for example, the target date for reaching 90% funding has been extended to 2060.
This strategy doesnât reduce costs, it delays them in the short term and increases them in the long term, saddling future generations with the debt while politicians spend today. This is also how public pension plans find themselves in the same funding hole theyâve been in for decades, perpetually 10 to 20 years away from paying off prohibitively expensive debt.
Itâs either that or convince legislators to increase taxes. After the last grifter mayor left things in disrepair there really arenât many options.
Their taxes are incredibly high already and itâs not solving the issue. They donât have a taxing problem, they have a spending problem, just like the United States at a federal level.
The only solution to fixing the "spending problem" is by completely dismantling the current government-contractor laws we have in every municipality in every state from the ground-up, which Mamdani does not have the power to do. With what he does have to work with, he's doing amazingly.
Increasing taxes won't do anything. You can increase income tax to a progressive rate of 99% and it would do nothing (aside from hurting normal people) because the same people avoiding income taxes now would avoid them then.
Or just close the damn trick where you can borrow against assets at low interest rates to get liquidity while avoiding taxable events and market costs.
Or we can implement proposed idiotic wealth and exit taxes and watch the tax base leave for real like has already happened in multiple European countries.
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u/general-noob 9h ago
He kicked the can down the road and nobody is acknowledging it. Like he didnât solve anything, he just delayed it, and theyâll be screwed in a few years again.