June 28, 2010

For Poor New Yorkers, a Little Less of Everything

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Entering a subway station these days feels a bit like going to the eye doctor. The first thing you see on the wall is a chart with large letters on top.
It tells you that a V is no longer a V. It is an M or a G. W is no longer W. It has become N, Q or R. And the colors are all different. You almost wonder if this is what it’s like watching “Sesame Street” on acid.
As on a visit to the eye doctor, the big letters are the relatively easy part. There is another chart on the wall with smaller letters mixed together with a bunch of numbers. Those are real headaches. And if all that isn’t enough, there is yet another chart. This one has letters and numbers written in still smaller type, tiny enough to send even non-geezers reaching for reading glasses.
You know, of course, what we’re talking about.
Over the weekend, the V and W lines went to subway heaven. Their disappearance will inconvenience some riders, and that is lamentable. But most New Yorkers will have trouble tapping into deep wells of nostalgia for lines that existed for less than a decade. Both began their runs in 2001. You could say that the W came and went pretty much in sync with the presidency of the man who had that letter as a nickname.
More burdensome is the second chart, the one with all those letters and numbers. It lists dozens of bus routes that have been discontinued or altered, creating far more than an inconvenience for many people. The changes will inflict outright pain. Nor is the ordeal about to end. That third chart, the one in small type, lists dozens of subway station booths that will be shuttered pending public hearings in mid-July.
There’s a bad moon rising in New York.
Mass transit riders are already waiting longer for trains and buses, and they can expect worse. No doubt brickbats will be hurled at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which may deserve its share of blame. But some of the authority’s woes are not its fault. You probably know the old joke about the chutzpah of the child who kills his parents. The Albany version is about lawmakers who snatched $143 million in state financing from the authority, then howled in outrage when transit service had to be reduced.
Naturally, working stiffs are hurt the most. They find themselves in the politicians’ crosshairs in many ways — they along with those who rank among New York’s poorest. They’re easy targets, especially for a governor who, like the mayor of New York City, rules out taxing rich people any further lest they pack their Louis Vuitton bags and scoot.
In the tug of war over the state budget, measures that have been approved or proposed include a significantly higher tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products. They include expanded hours for video lottery machines. They include a new tax on sugary soft drinks. As noted last week in this column, those are all things on which less-affluent New Yorkers disproportionately spend their limited resources.
That list has now been expanded. It includes eliminating, at least for a while, a state sales tax exemption on clothing and shoe purchases under $110. Who do you think that hurts more — Kmart shoppers or the Paul Stuart crowd?
A plan to let individual State University of New York campuses set their own tuition rates is sure to fall most heavily on those who turn to SUNY in the first place because they don’t have much money.
Even a proposal that seems aimed at the wealthy could boomerang. This one would slice in half the tax deduction that people making $10 million or more may take for their charitable gifts. One unintended consequence may well be that donations to worthy charities shrink. Yet another bunch of needy people would thus take it on the chin.
Ah, but why be glum? There are plenty of reasons for cheer.
For example, on Thursday the fabulously wealthy LeBron James, a Cleveland basketball player, becomes a free agent. Some prominent New Yorkers desperately want him to play here, and they are throwing all sorts of freebies his way as inducements. After all, why should a zillionaire pay his own way? That’s what the less illustrious and the less affluent must do.
The courtship of Mr. James is supposed to fill us with civic pride. The good news is that we will have more time to read about it while we stand on the subway platform waiting longer than ever for an overcrowded train to arrive.