That's How
7d 7h ago by lemmy.world/u/homesweethomeMrL in microblogmemes
Nd let's not forget that there was an economic benefit too that conservatives will ignore. People were able to get out of their house and go spend money thanks to the people who shoveled. People went to work and kept things going.
Conservatives frequently think these things bring no value, and will absolutely mock it on fox news saying "so people can wALk". But yes, the benefit is they can go keep the economy going.
Its why I don't understand why they are against things like high speed rail. Its an investment. Every time we connect people together trade happens, and economies grow. Its kind of how that works.
I’d love to know what the economic ROI is on paying people that much to clear snow. I bet it’s huge in NYC.
In a city where the vast majority either walk to work, or walk to the subway to get to work, I can't imagine. We clear roadways in the midwest and no one bats an eye, but clearing sidewalks in a walkable city is crazy to them.
It is because they personally do not walk on the sidewalks and don't se employees as people and would rather they just trudged through the drifts to thank them for a paycheck.
They do know that trucks move goods around, which they care about.
Therefore roads being cleared is important to the wealthy and sidewalks are not.
Let's be real, it's not that much money. I mean $30/hr is nice, but that's only when there's enough snow to be worth cleaning, and only half the year. It's not like a full-time position paid $30/hr.
So the investment is relatively small, and the benefit is relatively large.
I've known several people who love that kind of seasonal/day labor kind of work. They can work and save while the work is there and then do contract/part-time in the off season. It's not for everyone but some people make it work.
I wonder how it's set up, can I just put in some hours after my day job or is there a set schedule?
Snow removal is normally an on-call job. There's no need to work when there's no snow to remove. It's not a reliable source of income.
A seasonal job like landscaping or irrigation can be reliable. Snow removal is unfortunately not one of those jobs. It makes sense if you can do multiple similar jobs during the season.
Plus all the money paid out in wages went back into the local economy for rent, food, etc. It didn't go to offshore tax havens.
Conservative don't want to make things better for everyone, they want to make things better for themselves.
This makes them short sighted and only see the money right in front of their face, which in this case, is going into the pockets of people shovelling snow.
They don't see the benefit because it doesn't benefit them immediately.
But you can bet your life that they will reap the benefit as they pull themselves up by other peoples bootstraps.
Also those people are getting swole while they shovel snow.
The issue with public transport is that it's an investment that will pay off in years, not next quarter, or even next election. They don't give a fuck if it doesn't benefit them specifically, and right now.
Also, it evens the field. They don't want this because the bottom having more means they are less above them.
Your last point is probably the most important part, it's not about money, it's about classism.
Even more specifically the class struggle they are waging against us and winning.
Because everything's a get rich quick scheme or a scam, investments to them are rigging bets on polymarket
Let’s not forget also, that when you pay people directly they go and spend that money. Businesses cannot have customers if the customers don’t have money. The reason why money is kept so tight is a) blind greed and b) because then people can only afford to patronize Walmart or Amazon, not their local stores.
Conservatives like to act as though raising minimum wage will kill local businesses despite the fact that that is not how that works.
Turns out when people have money to spend they spend across the board, both places like walmart/amazon and also the local stores
I mean, yes, but they have the choice.
Clean energy is another example of an investment which obviously saves money in the long term and also improves the economy in the short term. Conservatives don't care about that because they don't care about the long term, and even if they do, they want all of these issues to still be around so they have something to yell about (since apparently voters only care about something being a problem and can't tell if the 'solution' will actually make things better or worse). There's also a lot of lobbyist money that they can keep on getting by preventing these sorts of investments. If we stopped relying on a couple of oil companies, then those oil companies wouldn't be able to give the politicians money.
Besides that, people are struggling to make ends meet. If the city pays them to do something, that money isn't just staying in saving accounts. They are going to spend it, likely very very soon.
And it's not a new concept either, it has been proven many times and there's plenty of case studies. High speed rail too, all over Europe, China and Japan. But when your job has been given to you by an oil company donation...
It's an investment to the public, not a direct injection of cash/investment that they will directly benefit from.
Conservatives are stupid, basically. Given a set of facts they will draw back conclusions
I assume oil companies broke the brain of the worst americans so now they only want what's best for oil companies, most of the time without even realising it.
Its so obvious top which is the most annoying thing. Cars are freedom. Well, no, they're actually a huge liability that cost a small fortune and lose that value, and then you're tethered to a gas pump forever.
Or I could, I don't know, take public transit anywhere I wanted to go. You know, freedom to choose other things
Woah, woah, woah! I don't want investment that benefits everyone. I only want investment that benefits me! It's a zero-sum game and I need to be the one winning.
If I'm not above anyone else in my head then literally what is even the point?? (/s)
I agree but I think we are currently driving past that place in history where everything is based on buying and selling things for money. The current imbalance of capital is slowly catching on to the rest of the world, not just the ones who've known it all along.
Money can be exchanged for goods and services!
Tell that to conservatives that say to cut taxes and social services.
No! Money is only supposed to be hoarded, so you can watch red line go up.
I thought you were supposed to give it to billionaires for safekeeping?
Homer is smarter than all conservatives combined
Homer's brain is anyway, the thoughts don't usually make it all the way through Homer.
It's a shame that removing the crayon didn't work for RFK.
The worm ate it
S-M-R-Ter you mean.
Woo hoo!
Does that include a peanut?
How DARE he use MY Tax Money to make MY Life EASIER! EVERYONE knows Tax Money is meant for RICH PEOPLE and NO ONE else!
Its fucking painful that its headline worthy that taxes were used for the betterment of the places they were paid in.
They aren't even used to bomb brown people overseas 😡
Or given to Netanyahu to bomb brown people.
Don't worry, ya boy Trump has you covered. They're bombing brown people side by side with Netanyahu rn
Not for THIS tax money, but American tax money still.
Maybe.
Taxes rarely get any good propaganda, though. I don't mind news stories like this being plastered everwhere if it means people will start believing their government can do something for them again.
Yeah hate to live in a world where expected behaviour becomes our paradise.
Wait wait wait. You're telling me that if you offer fair compensation for labor the people performing that labor will do the job they're hired for?
Son of a gun. Who'd of thunk it!
Ok, but all that money wasted on streets could have gone to a private pocket of a nepo tech startup promising AI billboards that would feed ads to ppl & the city would subsidise to "promote innovation".
/s
If they just built some more datacentres the snow would naturally melt form the climate change.
They are literally doing their best!
(And it's horrific beyond comprehension.)
Heated driveways are old school. Nowadays we need bitcoin-mining sidewalks.
You mean paying contractors exorbitant rates for slave prison laborers being paid $2.00/hr while the executives pocket most of the money?
They increased prison labour to 2$/hr now??
That's socialism!!
That's oddly specific, did I miss something?
No, not that I know of.
It was intentionally oddly specific for purely comedic reasons.
Doesn't mean it won't happen several times anyway.
Fair enough, cheers!
And some of that money will come back and the cycle will continue.
A basic thing that capitalists can't grasp.
They can grasp it, but they do not care. Sidewalks being cleared doesn't affect you if you are driving everywhere.
Or privileged enough to WFH/pause working when there weather turns.
$30/hr, $45/hr overtime
Yea... that's how time & a half works...
A lot of seasonal workers are exempt from earning overtime.
And $30/hr doesn't even seem all that high for a high-cost-of-living area like NY.
And yet it's almost double the minimum wage.
I read this as minimum wage needing to be higher, not snow shoveling wages needing to be lower.
Absolutely. My point was more that even though it doesn't seem much for NY it's still way better than doing minimum wage. Anyone doing minimum wage would love to make that much because the minimum wage is so low.
Its something closer to 400% of the federal minimum wage and more like 600% of what some states have on the books. Minimum wage has barely moved since I was in high school.
It's an infinitely higher percentage than zero, isn't it?
So is the increase in my weekly grocery bills. What’s your point?
Anything is an infinitely higher percentage than zero. That's how math works. Don't know what you're trying to get at with that.
They could have paid zero.
Why?
Ok, now you're being obtuse on purpose. Goodbye.
This is great, but I love that he gave the school kids of New York an actual, honest-to-god snow day. No remote class, no logging on.
Outside NY, the MAGA faithful condemn this and would rather have the money diverted to billionaires who will one day descend as prophesised, to give them their land of milk and honey
And some people said that "socialism doesn't have any incentives"
I can't tell if this is a joke, satire, or sarcasm. Nothing in the post indicates anything related to socialism, nor are there any incentives mentioned. The mayor simply offered fair compensation for labor. I would even say that $40 an hour is still a relatively small amount of money.
Roosevelt did the same thing too when soldiers came back from the war and couldn’t find work and their government Bonds were expired. He designed a lot of unification projects like bridges and all sorts of projects while those bridges are beautiful and they’re still standing today showing that we don’t have to do things cheap and we can still help people that’s grades are under that our governments to do that invest in their people.
Roosevelt as in Franklin Delano Roosevelt? He was already dead when the war was over. His successor, Harry Truman, could have implemented this policy?
What did they mock him for? Too expensive? Won't work?
Probably both, yeah. They're not exactly known for being objectively right about things..
How will he ever make a profit?!
I saw so many people commenting on social media how they have never seen the sidewalks and streets cleared that fast in New York. He is winning people over quickly.
For an example of how crucial it is too keep roads accessible and decongested, look at the Philippines. Metro Manila is currently losing 3.5 billion pesos PER DAY due to the constant congestion, and is on track for that loss reaching 6 billion. An average company employee might earn somewhere between 20-30k per month there, so 3.5 billion is a lot of money by Filipino measure.
$30/hr is insanely low for NYC. I guarantee I couldn't live on it there...
$30/hour is about $60K/year.
That's an absolutely livable wage in NYC. You might need a roommate, but it's easily achievable. I lived there for almost a decade (recently), but since you shouldn't trust random people on the internet, here's the MIT living wage calculator:
- Manhattan: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061
- Brooklyn: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36047
- Bronx: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36005
- Staten Island: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36085
- Queens: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36081
As a single adult with no kids, you're just barely under the "living" wage in most of those, but well above "poverty" in all of them. In any borough, with a roommate, you're cruising comfortably (see the "2 Adults (Both Working): 0 Children" column). In the Bronx, as a single adult with no kids, $30 is above the living wage mark.
It's also worth noting, people may live outside the city, but take a train or subway in for work. Living just outside the city brings costs down quite a bit.
I don't know if you have ever seen snow before but... this isn't a full time job.
I mean... It's temporary snow removal. Let's call it seasonal. So like not full time.
Then don’t think of it as $30/hr wages. Think of it as almost $500 for two days on top of your normal job. Or I don’t know who helped out, but maybe it’s almost $500 for two days a high schooler can use for snything
Cool but don't you guys have machines for this?
Asking from Montréal — we might just be more sophisticated with snow removal because of our reality.
Can't really use plows or snowblowers on NYC sidewalks. Too many trashbags and sidewalk sheds.
It also just doesn't make sense to invest in huge levels of any of that. How often does NYC get that much snow buildup compared to Montreal? It's almost certainly not worth the maintenance and storage on a shit load of snow blowers, for something that might get one use a year.
In my town they have a snow blower on a small tractor trying to clear walking routes to school. But there always places it cant handle such as a narrow spot or tree or post obstructions on the sidewalk. Maybe a car not pulled in far enough. Kids have to walk in the street until the constriction is passed, unless someone shovels
I’m sure the same is true in nyc: various machinery in most places, but some just can’t fit a machine for various reasons.
Note that they didn’t hire millions of shovelers. If they didn’t have machines doing most of the work, they’d still be shovelling
New york city has a 25billion dollar budget deficit.
Id need to see data on the cost comparison w alternatives.
Public Works is a net-generator of revenue for a municipality. They allow businesses to operate, which increases tax revenue.
The alternative to hiring people to shovel the snow is having business halt and the city taking a massive loss in tax revenue, to say nothing of the social, economic, and public safety benefits.
That's not the only alternative. In other countries the building owner is required to clear the snow in front of their building, and it generally works quite well. The American version would be to allow people to sue building owners for damages if they don't clear the snow.
I'm sure there are other alternatives. Not saying they are automatically better, but asking to compare them is not a crazy demand.
A few problems with that solution:
-
If the only people clearing the streets are doing it in front of buildings they control - how do the people who need tondo the cleaning get to the building to clean it?
-
This was an exceptional storm, not a weekly occurrence, and proving damages for a single day will be difficult. And a fine won't mean much 4 months from now when they pay up.
What NYC needed was an immediate fix during a crisis.
If every tenant can sue their landlord for lost wages for the day, the landlords themselves will shell out the 30, or even 50 bucks to clear the snow, on short notice. Again, asking for a serious study (not a lemmy what-if) is not a crazy request, maybe they can be even better prepared next time.
How much public works? It’s predictable that there’s snow, so you have equipment. Sometimes there’s more do you prepare for more. But it’s expensive equipment that needs to be purchased, maintained, stored and operated. Most of that expense is year round but you see benefits only a few times per year. Do you invest enough money year round to cover a once a year storm? A once every ten years storm? What about a 100 year storm? We have had those recently but that’s a lot of equipment
Meanwhile these shovelers aren’t on payroll most of the year, have no special equipment, don’t need maintenance, etc. I d expect they’d quickly become cheaper
I think you're agreeing with me.
I'm saying the public benefit of hiring a bunch of temp snow-shovelers is a cash-flow positive for the city because it allows business (and related tax revenue) to continue.
Yep
Tax 1% of the 1% and you instantly make that back. Why argue over pennies?
So how many problems would we solve by taxing your income more?
Now why would that change if the money comes from elsewhere.
I don't want usa having more money, they just spend it on weapons, ice, and military.
Are you trying to be a jackass or do you want me to actually explain it?
Typical, challenge some ones wafer thin argument so they switch to being a jack ass vs thinking
What did Democrats do? The usual?
It says in the op photo, they paid people to shovel snow
My bad. I thought he was a socialist.
Honestly, it's been two months and one of them has been spent dealing with multiple snowstorms. The fact that he's managed to check off one of his campaign promises in the midst of that (childcare) is absolutely Herculean. Let the man cook for any reasonable amount of time.
Yeah he’s rezoned housing, created city-owned groceries, made public transport free, eliminated crime and given everyone in New York awesome foot rubs. Yep.
He’s just that good. And, also, that’s how everything works. A guy just decides it. Yep.
Mamdani didn't invent anything; plenty of Mayors, Dem and GOP have done the same thing when there was a blizzard.
Of course, it's different if a GOP mayor does it...
Where did anyone say anything about inventing anything?
It's so funny to me. I point out GOP hypocrisy, but apparently I didn't do it in the right way, so I'm getting downvoted.
It's like you didn't read my entire comment and just went off because you detected a slur I didn't make.
Congratulations, you're acting exactly like the folks who attacked Mamdani.
It doesn't sound like you find it very funny.
Congratulations.
You've discovered sarcasm!
I’m beginning to think this guy is being sarcastic…
Lemmy is a bit like Reddit but without the nice factor. Love to read only the worst possible interpretation and then pile on.
I remember the very beginnings of Reddit where there was a "downvote ≠ disagree" rule and it was so much nicer. People only downvoted things that weren't relevant or in genuinely bad faith. We've come a long way from those days. Now I think people get genuine dopamine hits from downvoting an already downvoted comment rather than reading it for themselves.
Being smaller amplifies the echo chamber effect.
1: Snow happens
2: Republicans criticize Mamdani for snow not melting at below freezing
3: Mamdani announces well paying jobs as solution to get rid of snow. Right wing demagogues mock the initiative.
4: It works EXACTLY as intended, which pleases the left
5: You criticize Mamdani for not inventing the snow shovel 6000 years ago in a bog in Russia
"...invest it in people..."
So let me get this straight, because I find the anger here hilarious.
I point out that Mamdani was getting bashed by the GOP for doing something that other NYC Mayors, of all parties, have done.
No, Mamdani didn't 'launch' anything. The plan was already in place, decades ago.
Downvote me for laying out the facts.
Nobody is angry, just pointing out your lack of reading comprehension.
Republicans hiring people to shovel snow it before doesn't matter when the current Republicans were mocking the program which ended up being successful. I would assume the scale and pay was completely different as well because they were Republicans, but that is just based on history and stuff.
What facts did I get wrong?
Ok, but 30$/hr for shoveling snow with the benefits of a government job is a wee too much.
Edit: I was thinking in Euros (again...)
How so? It’s a physically demanding job, and pay also has to be scaled with the fact that NYC is one of the most expensive cities to live in.
It’s also a lot of calories burnt. Like, I would definitely need to double up on what I currently eat in meals at least if I were doing that all day and I already have an active, physically demanding job.
I once heard a way to think about this kind of comment...
It's not that you think they're being paid too much - it's that you think it's too much relative to what you make vs your own work and your own value assessment.
And that doesn't mean they're paid too much - it means YOU'RE probably being underpaid too. Be angry at your own boss - not the ones who pay better. This "paid too much" idea is worker vs worker class warfare to keep everyone miserable. Don't do the capitalists' work for them. Every worker who does better is ultimately better for all of us.
I know I am being underpaid and I am angry at my boss. I am just commenting from an economic point of view.
How much have you paid in the past for some clearing your driveway? That's about the going rate to have someone plow your driveway and it's way less than an hour's work. Personally it should be more to work all day shoveling, it's really hard work.
In NYC? Where a bottle of water is five bucks?
Would $20/hr make it acceptable to you? $15? Minimum wage? When you find a point that's different but acceptable, that's a hangup, not a standard.
Its an emergency situation, we had the largest blizzard in 10+ years. I think paying a higher wage over a short term for exigent circumstances where you really want people to show up is reasonable. Its roughly equivalent to a mid-level salary for a garbage man (which is probably too low for garbage men, but at least they get insurance and other gov't job perks.)
Also, they don't get government job perks like health insurance or a pension.
It is a government job.