Just how out of touch is Mike Bloomberg? We know that he doesn't like the living wage bill-now watered down into insignificance, but to compare it to communism? Here's the mayor's genius in action:
"The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR and that didn't work out so well," Bloomberg said. "You cannot stop the tides from coming in." Really getting into his nostalgia for the Red Scare of his youth, Bloomberg also promised to file a lawsuit against the living-wage bill, which would require that certain recipients of large city-sponsored economic-development subsidies set wages at a minimum of $10 an hour."
The incredible cluelessness of the mayor is seen in the comments of REBNY, the city's large real estate group: "The contentious living wage bill, which the Hudson Yards is exempt from, will likely not affect more than 500 workers total in its current form, the New York Times reported...“Its impact, I believe, will be minimal,” Steven Spinola, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, told the Times."
For 500 workers max Bloomberg is losing his cool? What kind of silly game is this?
So what's up Mike Bloomberg? Is he-just like his union adversaries over at RWDSU-waging a largely symbolic war on an issue that has lost any substantive significance? Sure looks like it. And this is from a guy whose economic development policies look more like those of corporate fascism-using the power of the state to take away people's property and transfer it to favored corporate cronies-just like with Willets Point.
We at WPU feel that the mayor should stay away from the philosophical arguments-he's out of his depth and his assertions are as inane as they are hypocritical.