Wealthy New Yorkers are asking Gov. Andrew Cuomo to end a $5 billion tax break for the state's wealthiest residents and to stop cutting the budget, which includes a $9 billion cut to education and other social services programs.
One signatory told Julie Shapiro of DNAinfo:
"This is what is decent and sensible as part of the social contract," [Donald] Shaffer said in a phone interview Thursday. "We've done very well in our society, and we should be happy to see to it that others who require public services are not short-changed."
There are a host of reasons New York City is probably more progressive than the rest of the country. But the primary one, and one of the reasons I bet Shaffer is so willing to give more to the state, is that the well-off see the less fortunate all the time. Even if you have a driver ready to whisk you anywhere you want in your town car, it's impossible to escape the street-level jumble of humanity that is New York. You would have to work really hard to spend any time there and not meet someone whose background, race, gender orientation, or working conditions weren't radically different from your own.
Understanding the social contract becomes really easy, then. Well-off New Yorkers understand how deeply their fates are entwined with everyone else in the city. And they understand that a millionaire's tax that benefits everyone else benefits them, too.
