Empire Center

Empire Center's E.J. McMahon talks with Bill Hammond about New York's nursing home polices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

E.J. and I had a podcast chat this morning to run through some of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)’s 2009 payroll data, released last week by the Empire Center’s seethroughny.net . The data show that last year, the MTA’s 74,708 workers earned nearly $5.92 billion in cash pay (not including health-care costs or money set aside for future pensions). Payroll was up by nearly $75 million, even as the number of workers fell by nearly one percent. The average worker took home more than

Classic cartoon characters have an entertaining knack for suspending the basic laws of physics–for example, when Wile E. Coyote propels himself in pursuit of the Road Runner through the use of a sail “pushed” by a fan strapped to his back. So perhaps that was coyote logic at work in yesterday’s news release from the advocacy group Single Payer New York, hyping a state-sponsored Urban Institute study of options for expanding health insurance coverage in the state. The advocates said the study sho

With the city comptroller’s office now projecting a loss of 35,000 jobs in New York-based investment banking and other financial services occupations, what’s the next thing that will drive profits and employment in a Wall Street recovery? In a recent Bloomberg Radio “On the Economy” podcast, private investor David Goldman gave this answer: There isn’t any next thing. This is the end of a cycle. Wall Street employed some of the brightest people in the world to find clever ways to sneak leverage