Saturday, April 21, 2012

The "Living Wage" Destroys The Bronx

November, 2010:

A developer offered to build a $300 million mall at the Kingsbridge Armory, using $50million in tax subsidies, but balked at Diaz's demand that all future jobs there pay $10 an hour or more, which would have made the project uneconomical. So Diaz got council members to nix the project. And goodbye 2,200 jobs.

Bronx BP Ruben Diaz, who Gov.-elect Cuomo tapped for his transition team yesterday, was delighted that folks would go jobless, even as unemployment in The Bronx was 13.1 percent. "The notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies," he boasted.


Unemployment at that time was a devestating 13.2%. So did Diaz's plan of denying jobs to his constituents wind up helping to reduce the unemployment rate? Ask a stupid question...

The Bronx is close to achieving a record no one wants — its highest unemployment rate on record.

The latest state Labor Department statistics show that 14.1 percent of the borough’s workforce didn’t have a job in February, the highest level in 19 years and just shy of the worst showing since the stats were compiled in 1990. It was also, by far, the highest rate of any of the state’s 62 counties — even outpacing economically depressed areas of upstate New York.

And among the five boroughs, The Bronx far surpassed Brooklyn, which came in second-highest in the city at 10.8 percent.


One would think that the preponderance of evidence that the imposition of a so-called "living wage" becomes a virtual death sentence for the economy involved would make an impact on liberal descion makers, correct?

Ask a stupid question...

Alarming as the numbers were, they created barely a ripple in city government, where the City Council yesterday released a “living wage” bill that will force companies receiving $1 million or more in city subsidies to pay employees at least $11.50 an hour, or $10 with benefits.


Take a look at The Bronx. The results of a generation of Democratic representation? A physical and spiritual desert:








 Let's end with a joke:

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr....said that he’s now doing everything possible to create work for his needy constituents.

No doubt.  Just like Obama is doing everything he can to lower gas prices - by denying the drilling permits, by thwarting the Keystone Pipeline, and by letting loose the rabid dogs of the EPA...

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