A playground for the rich

Once again, as the mayoral election draws near, the hand-wringing begins.  Rents in NYC are just too damn high.  Our current mayor has done very little to alleviate this issue.  The "housing lottery" system is a joke, and most units in the lottery are too costly for anyone making less than $60,000 per year.  The solution, for many people, is simple.  "If you can't afford NYC, just leave!"
Challenge accepted.
Let's set the bar for minimum income at $70,000 for a single earner.  On this salary, a basic apartment, transportation, food, clothing, and a few luxuries are attainable.  Anyone who can't meet that threshold has to find a cheaper city to live in.
Great plan.  New York is now a city without waiters.  There are no busing staff to clear your table, nor are there many cooks below the rank of head chef.  There are no housekeepers or custodians.  Certainly no store clerks.  That's going to put a damper on all the hotels, restaurants and stores so crucial to NYC's bustling tourism industry.  Continuing on to the performing arts scene, that would let out most theater staff and box office staff, as well as every performer and member of the crew of every show not on Broadway or at Lincoln Center.  So I guess nobody will want to see a show.
OK, so you don't really need restaurants, theaters or hotels.  And with online shopping, do we really need stores anymore?  Well, let's look at the things people actually need to survive in a city.  There are no new teachers, social workers, firefighters or police officers, and no EMTs period.  No traffic cops or 911 dispatchers.  No nurses below the rank of RN.  And that custodial shortage extends to the places we actually use, including hospitals and schools.  Speaking of schools, we've just gotten rid of all the para-educators who work with disabled students, as well as specialty instructors.  At the collegiate level, getting classes will be even harder because there are no adjunct professors anymore (as in the people who teach the bulk of college classes while scraping by on poverty-level wages).  There are no cabdrivers or maintenance workers.  And I hope that you weren't planning a remodel, because your contractor doesn't have a construction crew anymore.  Your nanny has also quit on you, as has your gardener and cleaning lady.  And if you hired a home health aide for your aging parent, that person has just left the city as well.
Going into the office, all of the financial industry will grind to a halt because the administrative staff has gone.  No receptionists.  No assistants scheduling meetings and drafting contracts.  No bookkeeping staff.  Sure, technology could handle most of it, but does a stockbroker handling billions in trade every week even have the time to manage his own calendar?
In our court system, there would be no legal aid attorneys.  No new hires in the district attorney's office either.  Clerks at every level of government would be gone, from the sanitation department to the DMV.  Gone would be paralegals and legal researchers.  And I hope you don't plan on spending the day in a city park, because the groundskeepers aren't there either.
You can't build a city solely for people of means.  It's the working people who not only keep the city running, but make it what it is.  They not only need a decent home, they deserve it.

Latte with a side of poverty?

When I got my first job out of college, I predicted the economy would collapse under its own weight eventually.  This was in 2003.  In San Diego, where I lived at the time, both housing prices and rents were skyrocketing.  I had what would be considered a "good" job (eight-to-five, permanent, with benefits), and the best I could afford was rent on a converted shed and a 12-year-old rattletrap Honda that I somehow managed to keep alive to go back and forth to work.  Neighborhoods that had been considered unlivable slums only a couple of years earlier were becoming too expensive for even the middle class.  Many of my coworkers were buying homes over an hour away in Riverside County.  They were signing subprime mortgages (which, even at the young age of 21 I could see were a terrible deal) and encouraged me to do the same.
I wonder how many of them were able to keep their houses after 2008.
The Great Recession was almost ten years ago, and according to many economists, didn't last very long.  Great.  Only most people in my age cohort are cobbling together part-time service sector jobs and side stints as Uber drivers, sharing apartments, putting off marriage and having children, and not really enjoying any real prosperity.  The only costs that seemed to have dropped significantly is the cost of gasoline.  Housing is still unaffordable, and tuition costs have tripled since 1999.  We've even coined the term "jobless recovery" to explain it.  The State of The Union is Not Good once again.
And we don't get much sympathy from those who should know better.  The Boomers lived through the "stagflation crisis" of the 1970s, and their parents lived through the Great Depression.  Instead of commiserating with us, or fighting to make things better, all we hear is a lot of blame.  "It's the IPhones."  "It's the lattes."  "It's the avocado toast."
Right.  Because unless you can afford a house, you don't deserve happiness.
According to The Economist, the ratio of housing to income is still over 100 percent.  There was a slight drop after 2008, but not enough of one to be significant. 
But maybe we Millennials are wasting our money on high-end coffee and techno toys.  Lets look at, for example, an IPhone.  At first glance, $700 for a phone is a lot of money, especially for someone crying poverty.  And especially when many people get new phones every two years.  But let's break that phone down, dollar wise.  $700 over 24 months is less than $30 per month.  That's less than the cost of an electric bill, a week's groceries, or a dinner for two in a mid-priced chain restaurant.  Suddenly that phone looks a lot less expensive.
But what about those lattes?  A five-dollar a day Starbucks habit has got to be breaking into the bottom line.  First of all, unless you're buying a daily Frappucino, you're not spending that much.  A tall Caffe Latte is $2.95 plus tax.  So about $3 a day.  Multiply that by five days (assuming that this is purchased on the way to work), and that's $15 a week.  Over 52 weeks that comes to $780 a year.  The median housing price in the United States is $199,800.  Assuming the 20% down payment you need to save before you can even think about a mortgage, cutting the lattes will get you there in 51 years.  Given that the median life expectancy is 78 years, and assuming you start saving at age 18, you will buy that house when you are 69 years old.  Does it sound like a worthwhile sacrifice?

The Excelsior Scholarship--good intentions, poor implementation

The latest idea to come out of Albany is the Excelsior Scholarship--free college for anyone whose income is less than $100,000 per year, to increase to $125,000 by 2019.  Sounds like an ideal benefit--proof of New York's growing commitment to middle-class families.
It looks good on paper anyway.
The Excelsior Scholarship is little more than a raised cap on New York State TAP grants, with a catch.  The scholarship only covers up to $5,500 per year--which is not the full cost of CUNY tuition.  If you receive any other aid, the scholarship will only provide funds to bring the total to $5,500.  You have to work in New York state after graduation for as many years as you received the grant (which makes sense--it is taxpayer funded).  Recipients must earn 30 credits per year--a hardship for working students.  Also, the grant only covers four years, and is not offered to people with bachelor's degrees.  Since degree holders are not eligible for federal aid or TAP grants, this would have provided much needed assistance to people trying to enhance their skills to keep up with a changing world. 
This provides some assistance, but not much.  This is designed for people taking a traditional route through school--but state schools have a number of non-traditional students.  Students who are taking fewer classes to go to school around a job.  Students getting second bachelor's degrees because, whoopsie, the world changed; the economy's in the toilet, and that B.A. in liberal arts that was supposed to provide a decent living doesn't, and why didn't you get a degree in STEM you idiot.   Students who are taking more challenging degrees that take five and six years to complete.  Students changing majors because that math degree is harder than we thought.  Students taking a semester off because life happens and I got meningitis and couldn't finish the term.  And guess what?  All of them could use the grant, and almost none of them qualify for it.

So, what does 2/3 of a kid look like?

Recently, an article came out decrying the rates of women in poverty.  The article quoted the statistic that 42 million women and 28 million children live in poverty.  This, of course, leads to the inevitable comments about welfare queens with multiple baby-daddies having kids they can't take care of.
I know, after all, if you do the math, 28 million kids distributed among 42 million women works out to--about 2/3 of a kid per woman.
Less than one.
I would love to meet the baby-daddies performing this feat of nature.  Seriously, which two-thirds?  Is it divided from the feet up or the head down?  Or is it laterally?  Those poor children hopping around with only a vestigial second leg.  I have never seen a 2/3 kid, but I feel sorry for them.
Now of course, this does not mean that we have a rise in partial children.  Statistically speaking, it means that at least one-third of the women living in poverty HAVE NO CHILDREN AT ALL!  Yeah, so much for blaming the welfare moms.  Also, since this is not China, women can have multiple kids.  Therefore, this means that every woman in poverty with more than one child, means another woman with none. 
So much for "can't feed 'em, don't breed 'em."  So much for the multiple baby-daddies. 
So, what is the problem? 
Wage price inequities.  Henry Ford famously paid his employees enough to afford the cars they produced.  Today, the minimum wage barely covers rent.  When I was single and worked full-time (with a college degree and no children), my salary barely covered an illegal converted shed that I called home.  My car was falling apart (and this was in California--you don't have a car, you're nowhere), and I once considered not using it because it needed repairs that I couldn't afford until payday three days later.  Fish and cheese were luxuries--forget meat.  I was in that statistic--and I had done the "responsible" thing by going to college and not having kids.
Plenty of people do the "responsible" thing and get burned.  Remember that.  And before you cry foul, do the math.

Bitachon or caveat emptor?

While we wait for the final version of the psych report on the Things, I keep mulling over the information I got at the Small Modox Girls School interview.  Or rather, the information I didn't get.
There are two areas that I can claim expertise in, based on sheer experience.  One is moving (25 addresses in as many years on Earth.)  The other is school.  I went to eight brick and mortar schools in four states, six public, two private, before saying "the heck with it" and dropping out to DIY it when I was 16.  I have been to rich schools, poor schools, single-sex, coed, inner-city, suburban, magnet--you name it.  I have, however, never attended a parochial school or an "alternative theory" (Montessori, Waldorf, etc.) school.  Now, in my experience, school follows some basic protocols.  Students spend the lion's share of their days sitting in class either listening to a teacher or completing assignments.  Classes are based on the "textbook-worksheet" model, where the assignments center around either filling in a worksheet or answering questions in the back of a textbook chapter.  The only difference is in the teaching staff, and to some degree, in the curriculum.
While I was at the interview, I saw the Hebrew curriculum.  Obviously, the menahel is very proud to use Tal Am and teach Ivrit b'Ivrit.  However, I didn't get any information about the actual scope of the secular curriculum.  Nor is that information on their website.  (I'm going to go out on a limb and assume they actually have a curriculum.)  I also could not see a classroom.  I did, however, hear about all the "movies" (I've seen them--they're glorified PowerPoint slideshows), assemblies, and parties.  Great, but that doesn't tell me about what happens in class.  In other words, I have no idea how the Things would spend the majority of their time.  When I pressed for details, I was told to "have bitachon."
Now, we are not only talking about a place where my children will spend the majority of their waking hours ten months out of the year, but we are also talking about a financial commitment equivalent to buying a car.  Every year.  For the next decade.  Now, I have seen that there are cars on the lot.  I have heard about the leather interior, the sound system and the power windows.  I have even seen a picture of the car.  But I have not taken the car for a test-drive.  I have not peeked under the hood.  In fact, I have not even seen the physical car.  If I were to buy the car with that little information, I would be considered foolish and irresponsible.  So, why should I have that much faith and trust in the people who will be caring for and educating my children when I have no idea what they're doing?