It's Hard To Cry Poor When You're Rich

A central tenet of the New York mindset is that we are the struggling "inner city," afflicted with extraordinary burdens of low income and poverty that they don't have in the more prosperous surrounding areas.  Therefore, we feel a strong sense of entitlement to have our high spending local government subsidized by those supposedly more prosperous neighbors.

And so last week our Mayor Bill de Blasio made the annual trek to Albany to seek to get more of the supposedly bountiful state money for the City.  Here's a report at thestate.com.  De Blasio loves to burnish his image as the spokesman for the poor and downtrodden.  As described in the linked article, de Blasio asked for more state money for the City's schools, more for its low income housing projects, more for its mass transportation system, more for its homeless shelters, and so on.  Key quote: "The moment has come for the city to get its fair share of state funding."

Well, there's a small problem here if you are an old-time income redistributor like de Blasio:  While nobody was looking, New York City got richer than the rest of the state.  And not by a little.  Here's a table of 2010 Census data on per capita income of New York State by county.  Of course, New York County (Manhattan) is by far the richest at $111,386 (yes, that would be over $445,000 for a family of four).  Do a little math with the table and you find that per capita income for the City as a whole was about $40,000 against about $31,000 for the state as a whole.  And back the City out of the State, and you find that the remaining per capita income of the non-City parts of the State was only around $25,000.  In the comparison between the City and the rest of the State, it's not even close.

Now that's 2010 data, and I can't find something more recent that is as easily manipulable to make these comparisons.  But if anything in the last few years things have skewed even more dramatically in the City's favor.  Upstate continues to languish and decline, while the suburbs have not seen the same growth as the City since 2010.

What all this means is, scrap the obsolete "inner city" imagery and get used to the idea that the City is a lot better off than the rest of the State.  Sure there are some very prosperous suburban counties like Westchester and Nassau, but even they can't come close to competing with Manhattan's wealth.

And of course the consequence is, if there is going to be redistribution going on, the City is going to be on the paying end, not the receiving end.  When de Blasio goes banging his tin cup in Albany, he never mentions the relative income numbers.  But don't you think he'd be a little careful tossing around phrases like "fair share"?  It's de Blasio who's always advocating redistribution from rich to poor.  If they start distributing strictly from richer to poorer in this state, the City stands to be the huge loser.  You have to wonder if de Blasio is even familiar with these numbers.

And further in the category of people who can only hope that nobody looks up the real numbers, the United Federation of Teachers is out with a new web page titled "Show Us The CFE Money."  For those unfamiliar, CFE stands for "Campaign for Fiscal Equity," an advocacy group that sued New York State back in 1993 on behalf of New York City seeking more state aid for the City schools on the ground that the state school aid allocation formulas disadvantaged the City.  That lawsuit dragged on through 2006, and ended with a Court of Appeals decision in 2006 that generally ordered more funding but declined to specify the exact amounts and means.  The UFT now asserts that the City is "owed" some $2.5 billion more per year.  Of course, again the problem is that in the time since 1993 the City has gone from roughly equal in per capita income to the rest of the state to far richer.  As to school spending, according to a Washington Post report in May 2014 of Census data as of 2012:

During fiscal 2012, New York City's school district, the largest in the country with nearly a million students, spent more money on each one of them than any other large public school system in the country.  New York spent $20,226 per pupil, according to updated Census data released Thursday on the finances of the country's public schools.

That $20,226 per pupil is about double the national average per student K-12 spending.  Adding $2.5 billion per year (for about 1 million students) would add about $2500 per student and bring it to almost $23,000 -- way above national norms and well more than most upstate New York districts spend.  "Fiscal equity"?  Again, if they actually applied that principle we'd be in for a big cut.

The Great MIT Economics Groupthink

If you think that smart people are somehow more capable of independent thought and less subject to falling for preposterous groupthink than you are, then you need to check out the article "Empire of the Institute" from over the weekend by Official Manhattan Contrarian Worst Economics Writer Paul Krugman.

Krugman points out that a large percentage of the pooh-bahs currently or recently running or sanctimoniously pontificating on world economic policy all got their economics Ph.D.s at the same time at MIT in the late 70s to 1980:

Ben Bernanke 1979
Olivier Blanchard 1977
Mario Draghi 1976
Paul Krugman 1977
Maurice Obstfeld 1979
Kenneth Rogoff 1980

For readers who may not recognize all the names here, Bernanke was until recently Chairman of the U.S. Fed; Blanchard has the portentous title of "Economic Counsellor [sic] and Director of the Research Department" at the IMF, from which perch he purports to advise struggling third-world governments never to cut government spending under any circumstances; Draghi is current President of the ECB; and Obstfeld and Rogoff are prominent academics at Berkeley and Harvard, respectively.

Krugman's article asks the critical question to which I am sure you are all dying to know the answer:

So how did MIT establish this unique position in academic economics applied to policy?

You can read Krugman's article (if you can stand it) to get his answer, which is complicated and filled with economic jargon.  Or you can consider my answer, which is much simpler:  These guys tell incumbent politicians exactly what they want to hear, which is that more government spending is always a good thing, and they can spend as much as they want without adverse consequences and with no need to raise taxes.  In fact, the essential message of these guys is that more government spending, even wasted spending, even spending corruptly given over to your cronies and buddies, even spending that runs up debt to an extent that can never be paid off with taxes, is a positive good that will get your stalled economy going again.  As a politician, you can get this advice from what seems like a brilliant, top-credentialed MIT technocrat, basking in the respect of his peers and a darling of the New York Times editorial page.  And the only people objecting are a few cranks like the Manhattan Contrarian -- he's telling you that you can't do anything fun while you have your hands on all this free money, and he doesn't even have an economics Ph.D.!  So whose advice are you going to take?

All I can say is, it's the incredible power of groupthink, even over what would seem by IQ or SAT scores or college grades or other comparable measures to be some of our very smartest people; indeed, groupthink seems to be especially powerful over the seemingly smartest people.  After all, to believe the extreme version of Keynesianism that these guys foist upon the world, you have to believe, among other things, that:

• Incurring government debt in unlimited amounts has no negative effects on economic performance
• It doesn't really matter for a government whether it bothers with taxes at all -- Just incur more debt!
• Diverting resources from more productive to less productive uses through government expenditure is a positive good for economic performance.

I just don't think that it's possible to believe things at this degree of preposterousness unless you have the benefit of lots of similarly-credentialed seemingly smart people all nodding at each other and reassuring each other that it all makes sense.

At the end of his article Krugman as usual claims that recent economic results around the world vindicate the theories of him and his groupthinking colleagues.  Care to give us any explanation for Venezuela, Argentina, Greece, or Cuba?  Arnold Kling at askblog comments:

Empirical macroeconomics seems to me to boil down to a pure exercise in confirmation bias.

Although not mentioned in Krugman's article, the biggest name in the MIT Economics Department in the late 70s was Paul Samuelson, famous for making millions on the textbook that taught Fallacy Keynesianism to generations of college students, and for making the most famous disastrously wrong economic prediction of all time -- made in 1943:

[W]ere the war to end suddenly within the next 6 months, were we again planning to wind up our war effort in the greatest haste, to demobilize our armed forces, to liquidate price controls, to shift from astronomical deficits to even the large deficits of the thirties--then there would be ushered in the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.

Well, the war did end suddenly, government spending was promptly cut in half, and the economy took off.  You don't know that because you read the New York Times and it doesn't fit their narrative.  Don't tell Blanchard, Draghi, Krugman, et al.

The Most Insidious Area Of Government Regulation

OK that title sets me a high bar of insidiousness, but I have a very strong nominee: the regulation -- and criminalization -- of so-called "money laundering."  In an article back in December 2012 where I described government money-laundering regulation as "the next big shakedown," I had this to say:

We have allowed the government to deputize the banks to spy on us all 24/7 behind our backs to enable an exercise in total futility.

Few non-specialists pay much attention to money laundering regulation because it takes place behind your back and they don't tell you they are doing it.  Hey, that's what makes it insidious!  Those who give it a small amount of thought tend to think, if you want to get the crooks, it probably makes sense to "follow the money."  Why wouldn't that work?

Like many areas of insidious government regulation, the money laundering thing does not have a long history, and basically began with the badly mis-named Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.  By the time USA PATRIOT Act passed in 2001 the banks (and other financial entities broadly defined -- they even tried to make this apply to lawyers, but the D.C. Circuit shot that down) had become involuntary law enforcement deputies, required to report to the authorities any "suspicious" acts of their customers, whatever that may mean.

So surely, if this gigantic invasion of our privacy and autonomy worked at all, crime involving money should more or less be stamped out by now?  The reality could not be farther from that.  Charles Kenny has an article at Bloomberg News on February 23, titled "Why the World Is So Bad at Tracking Dirty Money."  Some statistics please:

Michael Levi of Cardiff University and Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland have studied the global anti-money-laundering system (PDF) and conclude that it has helped facilitate some criminal investigations and prosecutions. But at best, it snares just a fraction of 1 percent of criminal income flows. A lower-end estimate for global laundering transactions is 2 percent of global gross domestic product—or about $1.5 trillion. Global money laundering convictions involve at the most hundreds of millions. In the U.S., a generous estimate of seizures would amount to a mere 0.2 percent of all laundered funds.

The Levi/Reuter study cited there is from 2006, but Kenny also cites updated research to the same effect.  And how about the particular effectiveness of money-laundering regulation in the war against terrorism?

A system that misses all but a fraction of a percent of criminal financial flows is almost guaranteed to miss terrorism finance in particular, which involves very small sums: The Madrid and London terror bombings cost no more than $10,000 to finance; the Sept. 11 attacks, less than $500,000.

And exactly how many anti-terrorism prosecutions have come from anti-money laundering regulation?   Kenny's answer:  "None."  OK, I can't vouch for the thoroughness of his research, but I've also done some looking around, and I also cannot find a single one.  For this we have deputized the banks to spy on everyone behind their backs all the time?  And the cost:

Though the regulations have limited impact on criminal activities, they still cost money. Tracking illicit money flows requires a considerable bureaucracy. Enforcing the regulations cost an estimated $7 billion in the U.S., and probably far more.

I would call that cost estimate ridiculously low -- it could easily be 10 times that by the time you add in the compliance costs of all the institutions.  But it's real money no matter how you count it.

Meanwhile, what happens to all the money generated in the drug trade, or illegal gambling, or any of the other illegal businesses?  My answer is, essentially all of it ends up in the banking system at one point or another.  I don't see how the banks have any ability to stop that, particularly given the near complete automation of the process of depositing money in banks and the elimination of personal interaction between bank employees and customers after the account opening process.  So the banks are just sitting ducks for periodic prosecutions.  An example of a fairly recent capitulation by a bank was a settlement by HSBC for $1.9 billion in 2013.

Given that any bank can be prosecuted for poor money laundering compliance at any time, you may be thinking that the Feds have been fairly discreet about this one lately, and there's something to that.  But remember, our federal/state system is plagued by dozens of overlapping prosecutors and regulators, each looking to get his name in the papers.  And thus here in New York we have a head banking regulator named Benjamin Lawsky, about as desperately ambitious a buffoon to come along since Eliot Spitzer, making a speech yesterday at Columbia University.  The Wall Street Journal reports on the speech in today's edition:

In his speech, Lawsky also touched on new rules he is considering to better protect against money laundering, including random audits for DFS licensed banks to assess how well they flag suspicious transactions.  Lawsky said he might also start requiring bank executives to certify that their money transaction monitoring is up to snuff to better protect against terrorism and other crimes.  "Money is the oxygen feeding the fire that is terrorism," Lawsky said. "Without moving massive amounts of money around the globe, international terrorism cannot thrive."

Is it possible that Lawsky is so ill-informed that he believes that more anti-money-laundering regulation can actually have some effect on the war on terrorism?  Probably, he just doesn't care about that one way or the other.  What he does know is that it's impossible for banks to tell "dirty" from "clean" money, and thus to keep "dirty" money out.  So if he can force bank executives to "certify" that they keep out "dirty" money, he can then have a lay-down prosecution any time he feels like it where he gets to have some big name executive hauled off in handcuffs and his own picture on page A1.  This is not a pretty game.

Don't know if you caught yesterday's Supreme Court opinion where the Court reversed the conviction of a fisherman under Section 1519 of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulation law, supposedly because he was someone who "knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object."  The "tangible objects" in question were a small number of allegedly undersized fish.  The majority found it out-of-line to use this financial-regulatory act to prosecute a fishing violation (to obtain hugely enhanced penalties).  Justice Kagan wrote the dissent -- in other words, she would have affirmed the conviction on the grounds that the words of the statute mean what they say, no matter how bizarrely applied.  But then she had this to say:

"[Section 1519 is a] bad law -- too broad and undifferentiated, with too-high maximum penalties, which give prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion.  And I'd go further: In those ways, Section 1519 is unfortunately not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code."

I'd only add that it's not just a problem at the federal level, but with many states as well, with New York of course in the lead.

Should You Believe What The Government Says About Vaccination?

It's been big news lately that childhood diseases thought to be near eradication are making a comeback due to failure of many parents to get their kids vaccinated.  For example, here is an article from Time today reporting that the number of recent measles cases is up to 154.  (If you're my age, 154 doesn't sound like a lot of cases of measles.  There were a lot more than 154 cases of measles in my own little elementary school of about 300 kids back in the 50s.  In those days, pretty much everybody -- myself included -- got measles, rubella, mumps, and chicken pox.  But I digress.)

The government puts out all kinds of information touting the safety of the vaccines.  For example, here is the CDC's page on the safety of the measles vaccine.  But lots of parents avoid the vaccines despite the government information.  The big question is, should you trust the government?

It may shock everyone here to learn that on the question of what to do about vaccinating your kids, I am on the side of the government.  By all means, the kids should be vaccinated.  But this controversy points up a much bigger issue, which is that the government definitely can't be trusted on this or any other issue.  On this issue I didn't trust the government, but did my own investigation.  So should you.

My view is that the government's credibility is a precious asset to be carefully guarded and used judiciously in the most important situations for the protection of the public's health and safety.  That shows you how old-fashioned I am.  The government long ago cast aside the old-fashioned view in favor of an approach of putting out whatever fake information they think they can get away with to sell the people on going along with expansion of government size and power.  And when mere lies don't work, try fake claims of disaster and apocalypse.

Start just with CDC.  If you follow this institution at all, you know that it has a gigantic case of mission creep -- call it "mission explosion."  That has led them to redefine lots of things as "disease" and to seek control over large areas of your life that they should have nothing to do with.  For example, how about the anti-salt campaign?  Yes, CDC is deep into that one.  It's current web page on the subject advises that "Most Americans should consume less sodium," and "Too much sodium is bad for your health."  Have they even heard that in 2013 the Institute of Medicine put out a big study debunking almost all of the government anti-salt campaign?  And how about the campaign against second-hand tobacco smoke?  Yes, again, it's one with extremely weak statistical backing, yet endlessly flogged by none other than CDC (along with EPA in this case).  Once you've tried enough of these things, nobody will any longer trust anything you say -- and rightly so.  So why is there surprise that nobody listens to these people on the subject of vaccines?

And of course, CDC is just the tip of the iceberg.  The now-completely-debunked low fat diet?  That one is mainly the baby of the Department of Agriculture ("DOA" is my preferred acronym.).

And if we might move on from health issues to economic ones, readers here are well aware that most government economic statistics are false in fundamental ways, always with an eye toward selling the people on bigger and more powerful government.  Thus, the so-called "poverty" rate is carefully constructed so that it can never go down no matter how much money the government spends to cure the poverty.  Government budgets and deficits are reported on a cash rather than accrual basis, which completely conceals the ongoing disaster of unfunded entitlements.  Government GDP statistics are constructed to count even the most outrageous total waste as a 100 cents on the dollar addition to GDP, and thus to make it appear that elimination of total waste decreases GDP.

And I'm only now getting to "the greatest scientific fraud of all time."  The amount of fake information put out by the government and government-paid fake "scientists" on the subject of the global warming scare is truly staggering.  Indeed, a whole sub-specialty called "climate communication" has sprung up, basically a euphemism for the effort to scare the public with tales of climate apocalypse into turning over complete control of the economy to bureaucrats.  The polar ice caps are melting!  Polar bears are dying!  Sea level rise will drown us all!  Do you believe a word they say?  Why?

(P.S.  Good post here by Tony Heller/Steven Goddard yesterday comparing a New York Times article from December 2012 here predicting closure within 25 years of half of Northeastern ski resorts from warm temperatures and lack of snow to the latest data from US HCN showing that Jan/Feb 2015 is on track to be the coldest since records began about 1890 in the Northeast U.S.)

UPDATE 2/25/15:  Many readers may be aware of the scandal whereby Lisa Jackson, then Administrator of EPA, used a personal email account in the name of "Richard Windsor" to do agency business when she wanted to avoid potential disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.  A dogged fellow named Chris Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute nevertheless pursued his FOIA requests on climate issues, and ultimately got disclosure of several of the "Richard Windsor" emails.  In its weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup, the Science and Environmental Policy Project has an excerpt from an email sent from an EPA functionary to "Richard Windsor" on May 18, 2009:

Unfortunately, climate change in the abstract is an increasingly – and consistently – unpersuasive argument to make. However, if we shift from making this about the polar caps and about our neighbor with respiratory illness, we can potentially bring this issue home to many Americans …  By revitalizing our own Children’s Health Office, leading the global charge on this issue, and highlighting the children’s health dimension to all our major initiatives – we will also make this issue real for many American who otherwise would oppose many of our regulatory actions.

It's about the children!  And by the way, do these people at EPA know that CO2 has nothing to do with respiratory illness?  How could they not?  So this is just plain, outright fraud.

Meanwhile, here is a picture from today of ice on the Hudson River at midtown Manhattan (taken from my office).  The river only ices up like this once every few decades, and only when the temperature remains below freezing consistently for weeks.  Since the average high in late February is 44 degrees F, that is extremely unusual.

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Obamacare: What Will Be The Reasoning Of The "Liberal" Justices?

The latest court challenge to the so-called Affordable Care Act ("ACA" or "Obamacare"), called King v. Burwell, is scheduled for argument before the Supreme Court on March 4.  This is the case where the Petitioners assert that the government cannot provide Obamacare premium subsidies to healthcare purchasers unless the policy in question was purchased on an exchange "established by the State."  Turns out that some 36 states never established these exchanges.  When those states refused, the federal government stepped in and set up its own exchange to be used by the citizens of the refusing states.  The IRS then promulgated a regulation providing that Obamacare's premium subsidies are equally available whether the exchange where you bought your policy was established by a state or by the federal government.  But can that IRS regulation be squared with the language of the statute?

This turns out to be a great issue to examine the two fundamental ways of looking at the world.  In one worldview, the limitations on the government's powers are fundamental to our freedom and our success, and as one example the government cannot spend any money unless by statute duly approved by Congress.  In the other world view, there is a tremendous moral imperative requiring the government to do everything possible to achieve economic fairness and equity, generally to be done by passing out government money and benefits, and all statutes must be interpreted toward that end, no matter what they actually say.

The basic argument of the King Petitioners is that the statute clearly says that the subsidies are only available to policies purchased on state-created exchanges.  From page 18 of their brief:

The ACA grants a tax credit “equal to the premium assistance credit amount,” which is the sum of monthly assistance amounts for “all coverage months of the taxpayer” during the year. 26 U.S.C. § 36B(a), (b)(1). A “coverage month” is one in which “the taxpayer … is covered by a qualified health plan … enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the [ACA, 42 U.S.C. § 18031].” Id. § 36B(c)(2)(A)(i) (emphasis added).  These provisions are thus perfectly clear: Unless a taxpayer enrolls in coverage “through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the [ACA],” he has no “coverage months” and therefore no “premium assistance amounts.”

Did it make sense for the ACA to restrict the subsidies in that way?  Well, there's this famous quote from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber from 2012:

In the law, it says if the states don’t provide [exchanges], the federal backstop will. The federal government has been sort of slow in putting out its backstop, I think partly because they want to sort of squeeze the states to do it. I think what’s important to remember politically about this, is if you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.

So I've been spending some quality time with the government's brief and with the many, many briefs from amici supporting the government (all available here).  And what is remarkable to me is the extent to which they steer away from arguments directed to the statutory text and toward arguments having little or nothing to do with the law and everything to do with what they see as the moral imperative.  Children will die!  Old people will suffer!  Everyone will be sick!  OK, I exaggerate somewhat, but not by much.

For example, from a brief for AARP, National Health Law Program, National Council on Aging, and others:

Lack of adequate and affordable health insurance among pre-Medicare adults results in worse health outcomes and death, and negatively impacts financial stability, the health care system, federal programs, and the national economy.

Or from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, and many others:

Petitioners' construction of the ACA could deprive millions of children of insurance coverage and access to affordable healthcare.

Or from America's Health Insurance Plans:

Premium assistance tax credits in federally facilitated exchanges are an essential safeguard against the destabilization and failure of these essential insurance markets.

And there are a couple of dozen more like these.  Guys, would you care to address the law even a little?  Oh, did I mention that essentially all of these guys supporting the government are on the receiving end of big payments from the subsidies?

The government, to its credit, does take a stab at a statutory construction argument, which appears at pages 20-25 of its brief.   It's too long and convoluted for me to go into detail here, but read it yourself and see what you think.  The gist is that an exchange established by the federal government is an exchange "established by the State" because . . . well, because.  And then they continue with lots more about how the "structure and design" of the Act should trump the actual language.  Of course, Mr. Gruber has articulated why the "structure and design" of the statute are consistent with the opposite construction.

But the funny thing about this kind of case is that you can predict which way the Justices are going to come out by their political leanings much more than by anything about the merits of the legal arguments.  In other words, which of the two views of the world do they subscribe to?  I have no doubt that Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor will vote to uphold the IRS regulation.  In their heart of hearts, they know that Congress must have meant to get the subsidies to everyone who might need them, and they can't let this critical statute get tripped up by what can only be some technical drafting glitch.  The question I have is, what will be the basis for their decision?  I predict an opinion with lots about suffering children and dying old people.  I hope I'm wrong, but I'll bet I'm not.  
 

On Mayor de Blasio's New Budget And Housing Plans

When Bill de Blasio became Mayor of New York a little over a year ago, many on the right predicted some kind of imminent disaster for the City.  But not me.  These things don't happen that fast.  It takes a long time to undo the good work in public safety and (to a lesser degree) in budget control bequeathed to de Blasio by his two predecessors; and yet another long time for the incentive effects of bad policy to have noticeable impacts on the economy and success of the City.

So walking around the streets of New York you won't notice that much has changed.  In fact, there's something of a boomlet going on in housing construction, and job creation continues to be decent if not strong.  Still, it's worthwhile making a few comments on de Blasio's recently-articulated housing and budget plans.

De Blasio continues to flog "affordable housing" as his signature initiative, supposedly to address the "tale of two cities" and income inequality -- although how construction of subsidized housing is supposed to alleviate income inequality is never actually spelled out.  Here's what de Blasio had to say about housing on February 3 in his "State of the City" address:

[W]e are following through on a plan to build and preserve affordable housing on an unprecedented scale. We’ve committed to the construction of 80,000 new units of affordable housing by 2024. . . . Increasing the overall supply of housing is critical to serving New Yorkers at all income levels — and to assuring we can accommodate the work force who will continue to grow our economy.  So we plan for the construction of 160,000 market rate units as well.

Let's put this in a little perspective.  According to data from the NYC Comptroller's Office here, the number of housing units in New York City exceeds 3.2 million.   De Blasio proposes 80,000 affordable units to be built over 10 years -- that's 8,000 per year, or 0.25% of current stock per year.  Barely enough to notice.  Except, as I have pointed out many times, we're talking about annual subsidies of something in the range of $50,000 to $100,000 per family for every family that gets in on the boondoggle.  Plus, these families are then stuck in the apartment they get in their first draw, and remain as officially-designated second-class citizens for the rest of their lives.

And how about that 160,000 units of market rate housing?  De Blasio gives no indication of where he came up with that one, or what if anything his initiatives will have to do with it.  Does it sound like a lot?  Actually, it's pitiful -- It's over 10 years, so about 0.5% of current stock per year.  Those familiar with New York housing history know that in the decade of the 1920s New York built over 800,000 units of housing.  That's 80,000 per year, five times the pace suggested by de Blasio, and in a city just over half the size (although rapidly growing).  And that was without any of the subsidies, tax breaks, rent regulation, landmarking and any of the other crazy quilt of restrictions and incentives we deal with today. 

Well, how about pensions?  As with last year's speech by de Blasio, I can't find a mention of the subject.  In his February 2015 Financial Plan,  if you make it all the way to page 44, you'll find a chart that projects total pension expense for the City for the years 2015 through 2019 at basically a flat $8.5 billion per year.  No explanation of how they come up with that, although they do say that future contributions have been somewhat reduced due to the good stock market returns of 2014.  Over at the site for the New York City actuary, I can't find anything to back up these numbers.  Are they paying any attention at all?  I don't have any reason to think they are.  But again, these things play out over a very long time horizon.