China and the US: An Opportunity

January 3, 2011 Leave a comment

A stronger relationship between the US and China could be an opportunity for South Florida, but their are problems on both sides and internal economic and political needs.

The pressures are real [between the US and China]. The United States’ need for comprehensive domestic renewal, for instance, is in many respects the price of having shouldered the burdens of waging the 40-year cold war, and it is in part the price of having neglected for the last 20 years mounting evidence of its own domestic obsolescence. Our weakening infrastructure is merely a symptom of the country’s slide backward into the 20th century.

China, meanwhile, is struggling to manage an overheated economy within an inflexible political system. Some pronouncements by Chinese commentators smack of premature triumphalism regarding both China’s domestic transformation and its global role. (Those Chinese leaders who still take Marxist classics seriously might do well to re-read Stalin’s message of 1930 to the party cadres titled “Dizzy With Success,” which warned against “a spirit of vanity and conceit.”)

via How to Stay Friends With China – NYTimes.com.

Filed under International, Politics

Public Employee Unions in Coral Gables: Not Indispensable

January 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Our Coral Gables leaders–city manager and commissioners–followed a single track during a decade:  they raised taxes and they increased spending over many years without regard for the eventual financial consequences.

Now they want to keep spending up on salaries and benefits and they want to keep up the taxes. It is time to make real spending and benefit cuts, and our city unions may face the same reaction that is taking place across the country against public unions, including police and firefighters who pretend to be indispensable (some are and some aren’t).

Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy.

…

Too many political leaders, they argue, acted too irresponsibly, failing to either raise taxes or cut spending.

via Public Employee Unions Face Rising Public Anger – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Budget, Coral Gables, Finance, Taxes and Fees

A Touch of Economic Realism for Coral Gables Candidates

January 3, 2011 Leave a comment

The economy of  South Florida, Miami-Dade County and including Coral Gables are not doing well.  Our city may do a little better because of its perverse income distribution (more wealthy who are doing better than others because of a rising stock market), but construction, construction employments, retirement incomes, family consumption should remain daunting for years to come.

It would appear that the city commission and city manager are living in a different world, raising taxes year after year, favoring intransigent labor unions and continuing to spend on superfluous activities.

…what we’re looking at over the next few years, even with pretty good growth, are unemployment rates that not long ago would have been considered catastrophic — because they are. Behind those dry statistics lies a vast landscape of suffering and broken dreams. And the arithmetic says that the suffering will continue as far as the eye can see.

via Deep Hole Economics – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, National

January 3, 2011 Leave a comment

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, National

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