Budget

Since the pandemic began to wane, New York-watchers have stoked fears about an urban doom loop : Millennials like me — liberated from the chains of our desks — would abandon Midtown Manhattan and perhaps the city or state altogether in search of lower costs of living. The commercial tax base would be obliterated, leaving no funds to support essential services like the subway. To prevent this dystopian future, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams convened an expert panel that I served on, and they released the “ Making New York Work for Everyone ” plan (also known as the “‘New’ New York” plan) in December, a sweeping set of 40 proposals to keep the economy humming. The goals of the plan, broadly, are to reimagine the city’s business districts, to make it easier for New Yorkers to get to work, and to generate inclusive growth that positions the city to “lead the emerging industries of the 21st century.” But now, it is budget season in Albany. The proverbial “three men in a … [Read more...] about Will Ambitious Plans for a ‘New’ New York Get Crushed in Albany?

For anyone who cares about medical costs — which is to say anyone who cares about the take-home pay of American families or about the budget deficit — President Obama’s health reform plan is a terribly mixed bag. It does so much less than the ideal plan would do. It would not come close to eliminating Medicare’s long-term budget deficit. It would reduce that deficit only if a future Congress did not tinker with the various taxes and spending cuts scheduled to be phased in over the next decade. On the other hand, the plan would make progress in all sorts of areas. Insurance exchanges would create more competition. A Medicare oversight board would gain authority over reimbursement rates. Hospitals that committed certain medical errors — harmful, costly errors — would face financial penalties. So which matters more: what the plan does, or what it fails to do? It’s a tough call, and the answer depends on what you see as the alternative to the current plan. If the past year of … [Read more...] about Health Care’s Obstacle: No Will to Cut

A staple in kitchens across the country, everyone has their own favourite pasta sauce. Perhaps you favour a thick consistency, or maybe it comes down to the seasoning. As food prices continue to skyrocket, cost will understandingly become an increasingly important factor for many families. Just recently, shoppers were shocked to see the price of a standard jar of Dolmio at £2.20, as the cost of some groceries has more than doubled. Keen to spend keep her bills down, Surrey Live's Laura Nightingale, set out to see if she could find a cheaper supermarket alternative that tasted just as good. Eight different taste tests later, she says she found a clear winner, meanwhile the popular Dolmio option finished halfway up the league table. Here's her verdict. She tried pasta sauce from Dolmio, Tesco, Aldi, Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencer, Co-op, Waitrose and Morrisons ( Image: Hull Live) 8. Morrisons Morrisons ' Bolognese Sauce had a horrible onion aftertaste. Even … [Read more...] about ‘We compared supermarket pasta sauces to Dolmio – there was a clear budget winner’

See the article in its original context from March 11, 1981 Section Page Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. The Thatcher Government in Britain presented a stark austerity budget today that raised taxes and reasserted the Government's priority that inflation, not unemployment, must be its principal target. The Government sharply increased excise taxes on such consumer items as beer, liquors, cigarettes and gasoline, and it indirectly raised some income taxes. It said that the total tax … [Read more...] about BRITAIN RAISES TAXES AND REASSERTS THAT CUTTING INFLATION IS KEY GOAL

SAN FRANCISCO — It could cost California more than $800 billion to compensate Black residents for generations of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination, economists have told a state panel considering reparations. The preliminary estimate is more than 2.5 times California’s $300 billion annual budget, and does not include a recommended $1 million per older Black resident for health disparities that have shortened their average life span. Nor does the figure count compensating people for property unjustly taken by the government or devaluing Black businesses, two other harms the task force says the state perpetuated. Black residents may not receive cash payments anytime soon, if ever, because the state may never adopt the economists’ calculations. The reparations task force is scheduled to discuss the numbers Wednesday and can vote to adopt the suggestions or come up with its own figures. The proposed number comes from a consulting team of five … [Read more...] about Reparations for Black Californians could top $800 billion

The government benefits began their existence as objects of partisan rancor and harsh criticism. Eventually, though, they became so popular that politicians of both parties promised to protect them. It was true of Social Security and Medicare. And now the pattern seems to be repeating itself with Obamacare. Consider what has happened recently in North Carolina: Only a decade after the state’s Republican politicians described the law as dangerous and refused to sign up for its expansion of Medicaid, Republicans and Democrats came together to pass such an expansion . The Republican-controlled House in North Carolina passed the bill 87 to 24, while the Republican-controlled Senate passed it 44 to 2. “Wow, have things changed,” Jonathan Cohn wrote in a HuffPost piece explaining how the turnabout happened . Obamacare — the country’s largest expansion of health insurance since Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 — is still not as widely accepted as those programs. North Carolina … [Read more...] about Obamacare Keeps Winning

Along the riverbanks of Eastern Kentucky, the redbud trees are just starting to bloom, their branches still lumbering under the weight of last summer’s catastrophic flood: Lawn chairs, trampolines, twisted gutters and school backpacks remain high in the treetops, each item a persistent and disorienting sign of how life here was turned upside down last July when shallow streams surged more than 18 feet in 10 hours in parts of the state, killing more than 40 people and leaving hundreds homeless . Yet while residents reach for the possibility of renewal, the largest regional investment being offered is a federal prison proposed for Letcher County, the heart of the flood zone. The possible federal correctional institution adds insult to an already injured region. In 2019 activists defeated the proposal, demanding that the funds be used for more forward-thinking purposes, including safe and affordable housing — all the more needed since the flood. The Trump and Biden … [Read more...] about Eastern Kentucky Needs Flood Relief, Not Another Federal Prison

DANVILLE, Pa. — The Geisinger Health Plan, run by one of the nation’s top-rated health care organizations, foresees medical costs increasing next year by 7.5 percent for people buying insurance under the Affordable Care Act. So when Geisinger requested a rate increase of 40 percent for 2017, consumer advocates were amazed. And Kurt J. Wrobel, Geisinger’s chief actuary, found himself, along with other members of his profession, in the middle of the health care wars still raging in this political year. Actuaries normally toil far from the limelight, anonymous technicians stereotyped as dull and boring. But as they crunch the numbers for their Affordable Care Act business, their calculations are feeding a roaring national debate over insurance premiums, widely used to gauge the success of President Obama’s health care law. Health plans around the country have just filed proposed rates for 2017. State insurance commissioners are still reviewing them. But questions about the proposed … [Read more...] about Why Do Health Costs Keep Rising? These People Know

So maybe I was wrong. I used to consider health care our greatest national shame, considering that we spend twice as much on medical care as many European nations, yet American children are twice as likely to die before the age of 5 as Czech children — and American women are 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as Irish women. Yet I’m coming to think that our No. 1 priority actually must be education. That makes the new fiscal stimulus package a landmark, for it takes a few wobbly steps toward reform and allocates more than $100 billion toward education. That’s a hefty sum — by comparison, the Education Department’s entire discretionary budget for the year was $59 billion — and it will save America’s schools from the catastrophe that they were facing. A University of Washington study had calculated that the recession would lead to cuts of 574,000 school jobs without a stimulus. “We dodged a bullet the size of a freight train,” notes Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, … [Read more...] about Our Greatest National Shame

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years. The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested. The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it. Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of … [Read more...] about America’s Sea of Red Ink Was Years in the Making