Zohran Mamdani, in the New York City mayoral debate: "Free buses would cost $700M. Cuomo gave more—$959M—to Elon Musk for a failed Tesla factory."
This is TERRIBLE Strategy! Spending Taxdollars on Rich people is GOOD! Spending Taxdollars on Poor people is HORRIBLE AND LIFE ENDING!
-DNC Strategists!
Don't forget that everything remotely good is SOCIALISM!
Cuomo is not the democratic candidate for mayor lol
Don't you see?
Paying for buses for ILLEGAL ALIEN IMMIGRANTS doesn't make money trickle down! When you "invest" money into poor people, they'll just waste it! Money they don't spend on the bus ride, they'll spend on one more grocery at Walmart, which is INCONSEQUENTIAL FOR THE ECONOMY!
When you INVEST into products and services, that person will HIMSELF INVEST into buying what he needs. That makes money TRICKLE! Do you KNOW where our CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY WOULD BE WITHOUT ELON?!
(/s)
So close! Instead of spending it on Walmart, in your text they should be spending it on booze and drugs. Then it's Republican-speak at its finest ;-)
Uh oh. If people realize that 700M in subsidies is the same amount of money as 700M in free buses, it’s all over. You’re supposed to act like one of them is cheap and the other is expensive. There’s not supposed to be math involved /s
To be fair, 700M in subsidies was supposed to have a return on investment. Though, it didn't.
700M in free busses would not bring a return on investment except for just generally improving the quality of society. Which I still think is better, but we do have to consider that from their point of view.
Edit: please stop replying to this comment with counterarguments, I agree with all of you and was just trying to say how it might be seen. This is getting obnoxious. I wrote it wrong and now people think I'm a capitalist cuck lmao
$700M in free buses means better access to jobs and services, which has tangible economic benefits and results in tax money coming back to the government.
I... Err... I mean bus bad car good!
I think free busses would have a return in investment (apart from quality of life).
A better connected city, transport wise, opens up new job opportunities or places to go for citizens, which can increase tax revenue.
More people using busses also means less cars (probably) and by extension, less pollution, which can save costs.
I'm not sure how much of a return those, and probably other stuff would give, but I think it's more than nothing.
Maybe someone knows better.
I agree with all of you and was just trying to say how it might be seen.
This right here is the problem. We allow the GOP and the Murdochs to dictate the meaning of these things and gaslight the people into believing the fiction that some billionaire industrialist stooping to grace a city with their business is worth more than thousands of regular folks just getting to work, doing their jobs, living their lives, and making our society work. It needs to be plastered everywhere that not only do we not need billionaires or even multimillionaires but that they are quintessentially harmful to our country and our society.
P.S. if you aren't prepared to deal with every Tom, Dick, and Jane replying to your comment to argue every little thing then you should give up commenting cause people are gonna argue no matter what. It's how ideas get around.
please stop replying to this comment with counterarguments,
"I want to be anti-transit but not get pushback."
I don't think we need to have an either or mentality. We need to break out of the idea that things need a perfect, direct ROI. That just reinforces financial overlords to do layoffs and to favor capital and the rich.
$700M in free busses could open up a world of happier people, access to better jobs and better Healthcare through better access.
There is more to ROI than direct financial returns, and we have to get out of the language of the venture capitalist. You say that it is "just generally improving the quality of a society". That IS a return on investment. And it's more important in my mind than a financial gain. We need to start treating happiness like it's something worth pursuing. We say money can't buy happiness, but then base all our decision making on money like it's the key to everything.
Short sighted ROI - only businesses create ROI? Residents do not? Would decreased accidents, decreased cars on the road, increased resident satisfaction not also create ROI although not as easy to measure as a business balance sheet?
If you want to be fair, you’ve got it completely backwards. Tesla wasn’t going to be bringing in much in the way of actually paying proper taxes or treating the residents well but we have actual real-life examples of free bus experiments boosting the local economy.
It’s not even about being nice for the residents, though that is obviously a major positive, it’s just the only smart thing to do. It’s literally stupid as hell to not at least try it from a financial perspective and the only thing that stops people is because it would be a kindness.
You’re just trying to be intellectually honest here, by recognizing that in theory subsidies are supposed to bring jobs and economic benefits to a region, whereas public transit is seen as a cost center. And I think you’ve been sufficiently rebuked on that point.
Anyway, upvoted because I appreciate the attempt to engage conservative fiscal policy on its own terms. It’s easy to frame it as “rich people good, poor people bad,” but occasionally we need to debate the internal logic of it so we can properly pull back the curtain and see it for what it really is, which is in fact “rich people good, poor people bad.” You started that debate, and as a result the consensus here feels more like a good-faith rebuttal and less like a sarcastic shot from the hip (which my original post definitely was).
You post on Lemmy, and expect to not get replied to?
Do you think this is a bubble echo chamber?
Wake up
return on investment.
define investment, who was going to pay the state's ROI? elon? lol. the jobs these companies outsource to other countries?
seriously spend two seconds critically thinking about your nonsense before you speak it.
Free buses would have a much larger return on investment.
the only difference between the corpo subsidy and free transit is:
in short: free buses absolutely would bring a return on investment it'd just be harder to measure the precise return because its part of a non-linear system.
Holy crap have they STILL not had that election yet?
The election cycle for mayor of New York is taking something like three times longer than that of a General Election in most countries, and because most talk shows are filmed in NYC the rest of the world has been getting a wildly disproportionate amount of coverage on it. I should not know this much information about the election of a city I've visited twice ever.
This is not a normal election. This is a unique moment in recent American history. While the MAGAs are forcibly dragging us into Fascism, we finally have a viable Progressive candidate for a major office. Not only that, but it's the kind of office where Progressive policies can actually be tried out, and proven to work, or not.
Not since FDR, have we had an opportunity like this, and we need it as badly now as we did back then. .
it'll be a major wakeup call for progressives across the country too, about how weak establishment-dems grasp really is, that they can lose NYC to a actual self-described socialist.
the GOP died to a personality cult in 2016, the old guard dem's can be swept aside just as easily if they continue trying to campaign on "returning to normalcy" (read, blatant unsustainable ratfucking).
Smaller city, but don't forget about Omar Fateh in Minneapolis too. He won the DNC nomination against corporatist Frey and the DNC rolled back their nomination after the fact.
There are fights like this happening in more than just New York. It's important to keep that in mind.
I don't know what you're expecting. The election day hasn't changed. It's the first Tuesday in November, always has been and, barring anything extremely unconstitutional from certain spray tanned individuals, it always will be.
The day hasn’t changed but they aren’t wrong that US election campaigns start reeeeally early compared to a lot of other places.
Americans love drama. The more they can draw out their soap opera elections, the better the ratings.
I hope he wins, though. The Dems need more people like him.
NYC having 1/5 the population of Canada in a much more concentrated area put it into perspective for me
relative to our provincial/federal election cycles, it makes sense to me
Both political parties love the socialist boogyman routine lol. They cannot resist spinning this in the media.
The US is stuck in a perpetual election cycle. As soon as somebody is elected we have to start thinking about the next election.
You know how in the debate, the moderators posed this, "what if tech company A" wants to come or leave or etc.
Am I the only one in NYC who doesn't want the big tech companies? If Facebook or Google were going to leave NYC, I would be all for it. All the big corporate tech bros make this place worse, not better- they enshittify everything they touch.
Small tech, yes, big tech- or fucking "AI company with too much money doing some dotcom-like stupid product" - no.
Also - one edit - Facebook being in the old K-Mart building, somehow makes sense - except K-Mart was better. Somehow saw Phillip Glass there many a time.
I used to go to Venice Beach and admire the semi-quaint and weird vibes the area employed. Since Big Tech moved right next door, I noticed a decreased in diversity and an increase of tech bros ruining the scene. It no longer has the old vibes I once knew, in addition to everything in the area increased in price due to their presence.
American's fascination with Oligarchs and celebrities is absurd.
Also all the tech company employees could just work from anywhere who cares where they are located
I am tech worker and I try to make my city better, volunteer in a dog shelter, try to use public transport when possible (San Jose doesn’t have the best public transport)
Don’t confuse tech workers to the top earners
I think the “big corporate tech bros” was meant to refer to the bigwigs. “Big” modifying “corporate tech bros”, not “big” modifying only “corporate”. English needs to normalize parenthesis for intra-phrase grouping.
You saw Philip Glass at K-Mart many times? Story time?
Yeah. He's a super nice guy. I mean- every time I saw him, I just thanked him for his music, especially the string quartets. He probably was like, "oh it's the guy I see in K-mart who likes my string quartets." So, maybe he's not nice, but he was nice to me. I know someone who knows someone who says he is experiencing cognitive decline - so if you want to write him fan mail, now would be the time.
BURRRRRN
Busses, train and subway - make all those free and it will probably be less expensive than keep building more and broader roads and parking + you get less pollution and fewer accidents. 🙌🏻
And people will use them more, getting out and exploring their city, spending money and boosting the economy.
The Dems are so far right now that a leftist candidate is a breath of fresh air
The Atlantic did a wonderful job writing up the union of the progressive and populist movements during the early 19th century. Would be nice to see that alignment occur again.
...cuomo is an ass, he lost the primary, but more importantly, he was ousted through legal means, from the governorship...read a history book...
If they eliminate fares, it'll actually be less than 700 million because collecting fares costs money.
Ah I love corporate/oligarch loving politicians being called out
thats why they even allowed eric adams for a while.
So I had to look this up, because that Tesla factory does employee thousands of people, and it manufactures their superchargers, has an AI datacenter in it, and a bunch of desk jobs, so I wasn't sure what was failed about it.
Originally, it was supposed to be a solar panel manufacturing facility, but that didn't really pan out. There was a quota to employ a certain amount of high tech manufacturing jobs, which was later changed to just manufacturing jobs, and then just jobs.
So while the factory is there and functional, it's definitely not what was intended when it was built with certain requirements set on Tesla (or whoever would have won the contract), and what it does now, doesn't bring in anywhere near the expected economic boost that the original intended plan would have.
So in that sense I'd say it's definitely a failed project yes. But the factory is there and functional.
Edit: Also looks like their lease is coming up in a few years, and theres opposition to signing a new deal with Tesla.
According to Wikipedia, 1,500 people work there. We could have just given each of those people 100,000 a year for six years, and had a few thousand dollars left over. We could have given 3,000 homeless people $25,000 a year for six years, and made them productive members of society.
Instead, we made a rich Nazi richer.
I think it's closer to 1800 now, but part of the agreement is they have to employ more statewide as well, of which there are around 3,000. I might have mixed up the thousands with the statewide requirement, not factory requirement.
The deal for this factory was made before Tesla was involved. It was with another solar company which then was bought by Solar City which was then bought by Tesla. They up'd the investment when Tesla got involved.
This agreement has had these people employed, paying taxes, for 8-9 years now. That's more than the 3000 homeless people would have had for 6 years, and by the end of the lease, will be more than your 100k/y for 1500 people. And that money building the factory, went into skilled professionals salaries as well, most of who probably lived in NY.
And NY owns the factory and land, which is still worth hundreds of millions, and with or without Tesla will still have economic activity.
Was the deal a great deal for NY? In the end, it doesn't sound like it (hence failure), but they still have a factory and if they really wanted, they could kick Tesla out and bring someone else in to better align with the original intention of high tech jobs.
Its not like the money just vanished and is gone forever. Although NY did take a loss on purchasing some manufacturing equipment, that it then sold at a loss, so that part however much it is, is indeed gone, and its part of why its being called a failure.
Wouldn't a roughly equal number of jobs be created by spending it on transit?
You spend that amount of money on anything that would generate jobs and it will generate jobs.
No wonder the leadership of the party that was so ecstatic about record oil production under biden is so reluctant to endorse.
Tbf that was an Obama thing
Happy I live on this small island. Free busses! But I can also just kinda walk everywhere anyway. Another good thing is I get to skip the dangers of sidewalks and crosswalks. I just walk on the beach, no cars.
Imagine if a decent person stayed in a race running as an independent. We would never hear the end of it. But they take Cuomo seriously.
Cuomo is the definition of an empty suit.
Not empty but rather full of shit.
Clutches pearls…Think of the poor South African Apartheid Nazi who is trying to destabilize all of the democracies in the world with our tax dollars /s
You give Elon too much credit. He just tapped into the existing American lust for segregation, he didn't even enhance it.
Zohran is a rapper. He knows how to roast people.
... the hero we need?
He has his ways with words better than most politicians do.
Giggity.
Oh no did he just beat the corrupt crypt keepers with logic/s
AOC & Mamdani should team up for the 2028 or 2032 Presidential elections. They would smash the Government of Putin candidate during the debates.
Link to article?
He’s gonna lose because he’s gonna lose.
He starts in with poor finger talking point about policy when he should just be like “VOTE ZAMBONI, GET FREE BUSSY!” (And also change his name from zabrumbgju Zulbranji to Zamboni Jammony).
Let his PR team take for free: “VOTE ZAMBONY GET THE BUSSY!” you don’t need hand waving and policy minutia. Just promise a bunch of bullshit and make your name less hard to remember.
Fucking DNC being like vote for “Final Fantasy: Rebrit//consul Jambolchik Cheonicle 3:222 relust” but beware rebuplican “Fascist Not-Joe”
Guarantee most people will be like “oh yeah I think I need to vote for Fascist Not-Joe…”
I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue, and you clearly took my whole supply and then some. What the fuck are you even trying to say?
You sound like AI slop after it’s only been fed Fox News.
Friendly reminder to take your meds
Thanks
What are you even trying to say with this spaghetti?
Really, really hoping Mamdani doesn't turn out to be Obama 2.0.
That would require Zohran to be ideologically liberal. I think it's pretty clear from a number of litmus tests that he's a socialist. It's much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist. Ideologically, being a socialist isn't merely a step to the left of liberal. It's a fundamentally different worldview which resembles American liberals in a few areas but only in appearance. E.g. both a liberal and a socialist might advocate for universal healthcare. The liberal feels that private healtchare is a defect of an otherwise functioning system. The socialist sees the system working as intended in that it enriches the oligarch class via private healtchare. Therefore the socialist sees public universal healthcare as removing a revenue stream from the oligarch class, diminishing its power in the process and reducing the scope of the capitalist system. The improvement to people's lives naturally follows as a consequence of that. From this perspective, it would be very difficult for a socialist to be convinced they should abandon universal healthcare because insurers would lose too much money like Obama did.
He says he's a socialist.
Democrats say a lot of things that sound really, really good too... until they're elected, and then we realize they're shit-stains.
It would also require a group of Republicans with the power to gag him every time he tries to do something.
Years ago, I saw a list that someone compiled of all of Obama's campaign promises and the results of them, and basically all but one he tried to do and was voted down by Republicans who threatened to shut down the government if Democrats tried to push it through. The one thing he promised and didn't even attempt to do was shutting down Guantanamo Bay. For everything else, the Republicans who controlled both the house and the Senate for 7 and a half years of his presidency shut him out. There's a reason that Trump spent the first two years of his presidency repealing every executive order that Obama made. Besides being racist and upset that a black man held any power in this country, of course.
Mussolini was a socialist, and I don't mean in a fake "national socialist" way (although yes, later he became that), I mean he was an important figure of the "Italian socialist party", editor in chief of the official party newspaper
Given a lot of his known history, I have enough confidence to say he's a real one, unlike Obama.
Given a lot of his very recent history...you might want to reconsider.
He can’t become president so no worries on an exact repeat. Personally, good to see such a great representative of democratic socialism on display at this moment.
Agreed on that second point.
I just need more than words before I'll buy in. I gotta see it to believe it.
What is Lemmy badmouthing Obama now? JFC this place is 14 and very edgy.
Now? Almost every president has committed war crimes, and Obama was pretty strict on immigration. There are definitely things I like about him and his time in office, but we can't ignore the terrible things that happened under his admin just because they didn't affect us directly.
How many people lost their homes when Obama was president ? Did Obama not boast about turning the USA into a leading of oil production ? Did Obama not drone American kids ? Did Obama not keep the wars going and start news ones?
You are the one that's 14 and didn't follow nothing he really achieved.
To my knowledge, he does not have the ability to drone strike anyone. So we're safe on that count
Unless he decides to take police militarization to another level.
I feel like mayor is a better jump up for a candidate like Mamdani than President. Also, Mamdani is coming up with a lot more policies that can get implemented. In contrast, Obama ran on far less openly socialist policies outside of healthcare. When it got to healthcare, Obama was relatively hands off when the bill was being written.
As a German it will always amuse me to read about policies that Otto von Bismark enacted here as socialist. Like general health care was given to weaken the power of worker unions.
Me too, but if his recent overtures are any sign of things to come he's absolutely going to be Obama 2.0
Goddamn I can’t imagine anything worse than Obama 2.0!
Oh! Oh I’ll be having nightmares for months!
ffs
Care to share any specifics? I haven't been following him too closely, like many others I'm a bit burnt out on US political news.
An African-born Muslim Socialist?
You might wanna drop religion label; honestly, adding the religion label isn't exactly comforting. Religious people, regardless of which religion, are not exactly very "left", religious people often misogynistic, oppress LGBT+ people, not to mention, its an abrahamic religion, these stupid religions have been causing havoc on the world.