Note the cycle — pension enhancements for those cashing in and moving out in every stock market upcycle, lower pay and benefits for new hires in every down cycle (with no one cent taken back from those who cashed in). Social Security and Medicare are no different.

Debts soar, but all we get is a below even level of ongoing normal replacement for infrastructure.

Retirement income is exempt from taxes no matter how high, taxes on wage income keep going up, the self-employed are made to pay more.

And to top if all off, younger generations earn less at work than prior generations did at the same age.

Young people are too lazy or distracted to pay attention, it seems. Where are their parents? Don’t they care at all? Those that care at all seem to be outnumbered 1000 to 1.

If anyone cares, read this, work your way back through the links, downloads the spreadsheets, and educate yourself.

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/generational_equity_and_the_legacy_of_today_s_politicians.html

This kind of spending is an investment in the future, a remarkable exception to the kind of collapse that Larry brings up all the time. Real capital spending, unfinanced by debt, is to be encouraged, not decried.

The budget is up 64 percent in the same period (2000-2008).
(http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/)

I call that skyrocketing. What has that 64% increase got us?

But let’s give credit — I rode in the last couple of days, and this time DOT cleared the snow from the non-motor-vehicle portions of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges before it froze solid.

One concern — so much salt on the Brooklyn Bridge walkway, seeping into the boards which are now white, that you wonder how they will be affected.

Be that as it may or may not, if that is what your position is, go ahead and vote for Weiner. People who have never administered anything always see waste in other’s administration. There is fat in everything. Regardless, when Bloomberg wins it will be a ratification of an active government that pays people well.