Shared Sacrifices

How is a 9% increase in spending sacrificing anything?

“We made the tough choices,” Paterson [governor D-NY] said in a statement released yesterday night. He said the spending and tax plan called for “shared sacrifice” that “stabilizes our finances.”

Governor Paterson is not talking about the government sacrificing anything - he is talking about the New York taxpayer sacrificing their livelihood. Taxes in New York state just jumped for "the rich", you know, any family making over $40,000 a year. Oh, and additional, hidden taxes will come from "...increased fees on utilities, excluding telephone, as well as higher levies for vehicle registration and licenses for hairdressers."

Somehow, I don't think Gov Paterson will equate this action with the last paragraph of the article, which ends with "In New York City, the jobless rate rose 1.2 percentage points to 8.1 percent in February." When it's hard to stay in business, businesses close or move and take their jobs with them. That fact has been proven and recorded throughout history. It shouldn't be a surprise to the looters. And maybe it's not.