Can the subway be fare free aswell?
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)
Political Humor
1241 readers
33 users here now
Welcome to Political Humor!
Rules:
- Be excellent to each other.
- No harassment.
- No sexism, racism or bigotry.
- All arguments should be made in good faith.
- No misinformation. Be prepared to back up your factual claims with evidence.
- All posts should relate to politics and be of a humorous nature.
- No bots, spam or self-promotion.
- If you want to run a bot, ask first.
- Site wide rules apply.
- Have fun.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Its crazy that NYC still can't afford free public transportation. City literally has more expensive apartments than yearly cost of operating busses.
Free buses aren’t something you really need to “afford” because even in smaller cities the economic value returned through that way of operating is given back and then some. Like, they’ve been throwing free money on the ground for decades upon decades and it’s about time shit catches up to reality.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Here's how I think they see this:
Landlords will go out of business. For-profit grocery stores will go out of business. People I don't know won't suffer (there's even more letters at the end and I don't know what they mean; that scares me). Businesses will have to pay more to operate, therefore prices will rise for me to protect profits. Brown people will still be where I have to see and interact with them.
Conservatives are fearful. They think when someone gets something good, it's by taking from them. Fuck 'em.
Brown people will still be where I have to see and interact with them.
They don't even try to hide their racism anymore.
You know they're mad
Look at this monster.
Yes but many of these would require taxing the rich, which I’m against because I might somehow become rich one day through virtually no effort or understanding of how one becomes rich to begin with
/s
That's it right there. Just mentioning the phrase tax the rich has become enough of a catalyst for the punching down to intensify. Keep the pressure on.
City owned grocery shops? I...wut. This breaks my mind. Not in WTF is this way, just how would this work. Curious how it will come out and hoping for the best.
It's a pilot program for a few stores.
The city currently has a program where they're paying private grocery stores to try and mitigate food deserts, but there's so few strings attached it's just free money to the shops.
He's proposing ending that, and using the money to directly open grocery stores in food deserts run as city owned coops.
It's not infringing on private business because they're not operating in these areas anyway.
The city owns and runs the grocery stores. They're not required to make huge profits and can therefore offer reasonable prices. They can buy directly from local suppliers, thus creating or securing local jobs. Basically, if you cut out all the bloodsuckers, things become much better.
The thing is, actual capitalist theory suggests it wouldn't "cut out" bloodsuckers at all. It would force them to compete but they would survive, presumably just fine.
A public option is definitely a socialist platform, but unless the government stores are allowed to operate at a loss indefinitely, supplemented by tax dollars, they pose NO real threat to those businesses, only to greedy gouging.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Someone has to pay for the busses, and for the rest of his plans. New York already has more public debt per resident than any other large city in the USA. New York also already has high taxes and a shrinking population. So yeah, I'm worried about where the money will come from. You can say "tax the rich more" but I don't think you'll have easy pickings.
Yeah, someone has to pay for it all - the WEALTHY people and corporations who benefit by the infrastructure. They get all the rewards of the system, but they expect someone else to pay to maintain it, too?
If they need to pay half of their fortunes to keep the other half, they'll be just fine. If they refuse to cooperate, we'll just take it all.
The wealthy have a choice for the next stage:
Trickle Up Economics, in which they'll still end up with the money in the end, but it greases the economy along the way,
OR
Robin Hood Economics - Take from the rich and give to the poor. The problem with this one is that it will be VERY uncomfortable for the wealthy.
I'm good with either one.
That's where actually taxing the rich comes to play.
"shrinking population"
Okay so you didn't even do a iota of fact checking here. It's growing. And it always has.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/cities/23083/new-york-city/population
New York already has more public debt per resident than any other large city in the USA
Got a source on that? Given that it's by far the most populous one, with more than twice the population of LA (when counting within municipal limits only), and as you say has relatively high taxes, the total public spending would have to dwarf that of most STATES for your claim to be anywhere near true.
New York also already has high taxes
Which is offset by some of it going towards middle- and working class people having to pay much less for some vital goods and services than in places with a more regressive tax system where the bulk of the revenue comes from things like sales tax and hardly any is spent where it's most needed.
and a shrinking population
So you're saying that FEWER people using mass transit fare-free costs MORE? 🤔
So yeah, I'm worried about where the money will come from.
Other than the obvious answer that you reject out of hand for no reason in the next sentence, here's one
Cops. An absolutely ludicrous $5.5b/y is spent on the paramilitary group/mercenaries for the rich and powerful, terrorists for everyone else known as the NYPD.
The people of New York aren't only paying a premium for the dubious honor of having one of the most oppressive and racist police forces in the world AT HOME. The NYPD also conducts "counterterrorism", training and other operations in Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the fascist apartheid regime known as Israel, Qatar, Australia, and several European countries.
Call me crazy, but if I lived in New York, I would rather my tax dollars go to poor people being able to afford going to work and school than to exporting state terrorism and helping despotic governments oppress and suppress disfavored ethnic and religious groups.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Someone? How about the millions of fucking people that live there. That's a crazy thought.
I’ve been to NYC 3 times now, and all 3 times people didn’t pay for the buses, they just got on. The bus driver didn’t even look behind themselves. Making the buses free is just a formality.
The buses I used were always PACKED and in all honesty if every single person paid, the bus would sit there for like 3-4 minutes at the busy stops.
The main shopping district for my neighborhood is 10 blocks away. I don't mind walking there regularly, but there are times when I decide not to go because I don't feel like it. If I could go to the end of my block and jump on a free bus, I would go there 2-3 times a week instead of once.
I would also explore other neighborhoods more often.
as a non-american looking from outside, if NYC already taxed the rich for a lot, then to me the next sensible logical thing for the mayor to do is manage the apparently already lots of money to better use and making his platform come true. to me whatever NYC is doing that sounds like mismanagement of tax funds
I suspect a lot of NYCs liabilities are in strong union-negotiated pensions for retired police, transit, sanitation workers. Hard to get out from under those without really hurting people. The difficulty with taxing rich people is that they can easily change their tax residency to just outside NYC where plenty of counties will give them a big break on income taxes.
The difficulty with taxing rich people is that they can easily change their tax residency to just outside NYC where plenty of counties will give them a big break on income taxes.
Mamdani's proposal is to raise taxes on any company doing business in NYC. They wouldn't be able to just change residency, they'd have to stop doing business in New York entirely.
NYC has a city income tax that's hard to avoid if you're doing well and easy to avoid if you're not.
Imagine how many buses congestion pricing could fund and how nice it would be to walk through the city with free buses to take you where you wanted to go. How many shops or restaurants you might go to. Maybe the library and a park. Suddenly there's more pedestrian accessible business. Even as a thought experiment it seems like it's worth the risk
load more comments
(2 replies)
Of corse they are. All of these things will actually help people.
No wonder establishment democrats tried so hard to stop him.
Access to food, transportation, housing, it’s almost like he thinks the job of government is providing decent infrastructure.
Or "insur[ing] domestic Tranquility,...promot[ing] the general welfare." The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.
General Welfare, sir! o7
Yes yes yes
Jesus would NEVER Approve of ANY of these! AFFORDABLE housing? Jesus would BURN it to The Ground! PROTECTING your Neighbor? LAUGHABLE! This is the MOST Anti Jesus Platform EVER! Where's the ELIMINATING Healthcare? Where's the ELIMINATING Homes? Where's the HURTING your Neighbors? Where's the JESUS!
Yass Khalifa
People act like $30/hr is high. Note this would be the mayor of NYC, so it would be raised for NYC only if he got his way. The cheapest place you can get to live on your own there I am finding is 2600 a month. So say you made 30/hr. That's $62,400 working 40 hours a week. Take out Federal/state/city taxes ends up being around $46,112 take home. The place costed $31,200. Making the lowest rent findable in Manhattan 2/3 of $30/hr.
They wouldn't be able to get approved to even live there if they tried. They would have to rent a room from someone else with a 4 bedroom place renting to 4 people for around $1200/ month. And share bathrooms/kitchen/living space with people. And they would still struggle to get by if they paid for health insurance, travel costs to and from work, food, and the whole living crap.
$30 isn't radical for NYC, it's like base needed salary... And hope you have a good stable relationship with someone else making the same, then maybe you can get your own place together, just don't do something stupid like get pregnant because you can't afford to not go to work, and can't afford to put them in daycare so you would both have to uproot and move real quick finding jobs elsewhere.
It says $30 by 2030. What is the term for Mayor? Is he promising something that literally cannot be done by him?
Minimum wage is current around $16 there. Standardly you put a plan in place with a set date and partial increases up to that day to allow companies time to plan and get ready. For instance the last time federal minimum wage increased, it rolled out as such
"The 2007 amendments increased the minimum wage to $5.85 per hour effective July 24, 2007; $6.55 per hour effective July 24, 2008; and $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. "
7.25 was what they said they were going to go to, but rolled it out slowly to prepare everyone.
16-30 in a 4 year roll out makes sense
load more comments
(1 replies)
Wait, we are gonna vote for a guy who is going to make renting a room more affordable?! COMMUNISM!! I WONT STAND FOR SUCH LUXURY LIVING CONDITIONS! /s