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#NYC Taxi drivers have suffered IMMENSELY under the #sadistic behavior of this city's #capitalist government. We hear you @NYTWA . This injustice cannot stand. https://jacobinmag.com/2021/09/nyc-taxi-cab-medallion-debt-speculative-bubble-values-nytwa-city-hall/
"During the Bloomberg administration, to help make up a budget shortfall in 2002, the city created over a thousand new medallions and put them up for auction."
"To raise more money, the city took a series of steps to artificially inflate the value of medallions by over 500 percent: setting increasingly higher minimum bid amounts at auctions;...
...setting a 5 percent interest rate on medallions transferred in the open market, discouraging drivers to sell on the secondary market below the minimum bid amount at auctions; ignoring collusive bidding at auctions; and manipulating public price data."
"By the time medallions were valued at over $1 million, the city had made about $855 million."
"About four thousand taxi drivers purchased medallions during this time, while others used newfound equity in their medallions to finance their first homes. Now, insurmountable debt leaves many of them at risk of losing those homes."
“It’s not a relief. It’s an ambush,” Balkar Singh said re: the NYC Taxi & Limo Commission's new relief program.