I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. It's not at all clear to me that hiring fewer and more highly paid subway cleaners leads to more equal opportunity, or for that matter that hiring the same number of subway cleaners with higher taxes leads to equal opportunity. I would much rather that the government treat its transportation system like a transportation system, and not a welfare system. If wages are too low, then a better place to do so is through something like the Earned Income Tax Credit, and not by discouraging employment.

Government won't ever set such an example, Angus. Government is just like any other business, except that it's not formally for-profit, and it cannot have any competition.

So government will behave in principle like any monopolist does.

But the government has a mission of equal opportunity, and it can - and should - use its monopoly power to realize that mission.

Of course I realize that government leaders don't always follow that egalitarian mission, the same way that business leaders sometimes allow concern for their fellow creatures to trump cold profit maximization.

My point is in response to Ian and Oscar's question: the government has more of a mandate to pay its workers a living wage than the private sector. All workers who are supporting themselves deserve a living wage, but for the government to pay hardworking people peanuts is just wrong.

Three words come to mind: automobile industry lobbyist

After being led down off the ledge of $4.00 gas this summer, I can't understand why we're not embarking upon a "mission to Mars"-styled expansion of transit in this country.

It's because most politicians act like they're from Mars.

So government will behave in principle like any monopolist does.

The only solution I can see is shrinking the geographic extent of government so that powerful local regimes like Mike Bloomberg's are able to compete with other powerful local regimes.

NYC can clearly compete favorably with other American and European cities. I'm not at all sure the Federal Government can.

Is it weird that my love for my city and this lost art of urban space design has led me to secessionism?

Generally, transit pensions across the country are poverty plans. There are some big city exceptions. Nobody I know is getting rich on a transit pension. The real problem is the grinding down of the bodies of transit workers due to the working conditions. The medical standards force many bus drivers into early retirement. (Of course, after watching many Americans lose their middle class status---some think the solution is to impoverish everyone equally.)

BUT the problem of the day is that riders are being pushed to the wall with cuts in service and rising fares. Uncle Sam will be spending a $trillion$ on something. Why not help us argue for job creation, a better environment, less foreign oil, national defense?

We all witnessed Katrina by the way. How will we evacuate New York with the current transit system, or worse one with even fewer buses?

Transit is among the purest forms of stimulus and investing in it can remake the economy and our cities. Let's build buses and BRT.....before we see $4 gas again.

Let's stop the fare increases and service cuts.

IOW, by screwing the new teachers, you end up with a situation where taxpayers are paying the same amount for a worse education system.

I worry about what they will make in two years. The "solution" is always to cut the wages, pensions, and benefits of new hires, as has already been proposed. What makes me nuts is how predictable it is -- a repeated cycle for which ignorance is no excuse.

And, once again, I have nothing against the highly skilled and difficult to replace majority of teachers or transit workers. Unfortunately, with one year paid to be retired for every year worked, we will be losing then without being able to replace them, again.

In any event, for out local transit situation the debts are worse than the pensions, and I'll leave it at that.

So, without a well paid army of lobbyists with their hands out for cash, you can see how easy it is for transit to get screwed. The fact we are giving billions to car companies too incompetent to build cars we need, and so on it just more icing on the cake.

a certain disdain of skilled union labor particularly but not limited to the MTA. This is often seen in frustrated college educated people who resent that the unwashed, uneducated, calloused can make as much or more as themselves.

I'll take Larry's word on it that he doesn't feel this disdain. But it is all too common among transit bloggers, especially when it comes to the wages that people like station cleaners make. The fact that station cleaners are people who live in an expensive city, work hard and probably have mouths to feed doesn't seem to compute.

Not so. It derives from a distain for those with advantages using their power to obtain more advantages, not limited to pensions, not limited to skilled workers, not limited to public employees, but across the board, with limited counter-examples. With regard to pensions, those in place a decade ago were fine enough, and should have been left alone.

"No one was holding a gun at anyones head when they negotiated these instead of the compensation needed to lure the primo executive from one employer to another."

They sit on each other's boards, and use the same compensation consultants, knowing that if they agree to a deal for CEO A, it will be used to justify a raise for CEO B, and then for themselves. The market and negotiation has nothing to do with it as far as I am concerned. And as in the public sector case, the cost is disguised.

"He also hates the teachers."

Not while they are on the job. Those familiar with my writing on the subject noted the change in attitude that came with 25/55, combined with lower take home pay for new hires. Unjustifyable, and a planet shifing event in my view given its cost and what everyone knew was coming (unless they were being paid to pretend otherwise).

I see the same thing over and over. Homeowners like myself already benefit from limitations on the growth of assessed value, but now also get that stupid $400 check. Senior citizens already benefitted from extensive government-funded health insurance, but rather than provide anything for the uninsured, they added benefits for those over 65.

Pointing out the disparities doesn't seem to make people happy, but sobeit. Then again, pointing out the disparities doesn't seem to make a difference, either.

Quickly, that wage settlements have been agreed to based on unfunded pension improvements has been a bad practice, entirely out of unions control in transit. NYCERS and NYPERS pensions, where the unions sit on the boards, are actually much better funded than the MABSTOA and LIRR pensions entirely under the MTA control, for what that is worth, and it is not worth much. Regardless, unfunded pensions are a big and on-going problem.

Regardless, pensions are very important to the particular operations of public transit operations and, through Railroad Retirement, the private freight railroads. Transit and railroads have particular labor market needs that are best addressed through having pensions, retiree healthcare and seniority based benefits that tend to hold employees with that single employer. The equipment has a very long life-cycle and requires development of skills and knowledge specific to that equipment. It is important to hold those workers to the railroads and transit systems especially during boom times when employers in other sectors that demand comparable skills, E.g. heavy equipment, construction, truck repair and operation and automotive repair, are able to offer transit and railroad employees sufficient wage incentives to leave the rails and buses.

Larry's attitude concerning pensions derives from a certain disdain of skilled union labor particularly but not limited to the MTA. This is often seen in frustrated college educated people who resent that the unwashed, uneducated, calloused can make as much or more as themselves. That people who work with their hands and backs are often less productive, more likely to injure themselves and others as they get older and therefor need pensions to hold them to that employer when they are young, strong and in demand is something lost on the "sink or swim" attitude implicit in Larry's arguments.

He also hates the teachers. Ironically, I did too, thats why I became a mechanic and a welder taking to books as I got older. Pensions hold teachers in place too and are a valuable tool in that market.

"Supplemental pensions" the kind lavished on executives as a tax dodge are another thing entirely but no one was holding a gun at anyones head when they negotiated these instead of the compensation needed to lure the primo executive from one employer to another. There the pension serves an entirely different labor market. There it is used as bait to encourage someone to make a leap from one job to the next.

That New York used unfunded pension improvements to replace wages it was not willing to pay was a way for Pataki to print money sort of like bonds without the mess of actually selling them. Bad Pataki. He could, of course, have actually funded mass transit and workers pensions at the time which would have saved us all a lot of money in the long run.

Now is the time to focus on other things. Lots of pensions are broke, 401Ks are 101Ks and there is a lot of misery going around. Funding transit should not be held hostage to Larry's jihad over past personal slights when he was an embittered public sector employee.