[From article]
A recent New York Times story, summing up research on urban income differences, noted that income inequality “is closely tied with the availability of affordable housing.” Places where housing becomes very expensive, the report observed, tend to hemorrhage middle-class residents and instead become communities made up primarily of the rich, who can afford stratospheric housing prices, and the poor, who can get government housing subsidies.
[. . .]
Average pay in Manhattan for a financial-services job is now $246,000 annually; in New Jersey, the securities industry is more of an upper-middle-income business, with average pay at $97,600 annually.
[. . .]
A recent World Bank report noted that a would-be entrepreneur needs to obtain six permits, on average, to start a new venture in the United States (compared with just one in business-friendly New Zealand). But according to NYC Business Express, he’d need ten—six local and four from the state—to open, say, a simple office-supply business in the city.
[. . .]
city officials fought among themselves and with neighborhood business groups over plans by the Pathmark supermarket chain to open an outlet in East Harlem, which had lacked a major supermarket since the 1960s, despite the $3 billion or so annually that its residents spent on food. That Pathmark couldn’t open “as-of-right”—that it needed to win the support of politicians before it could operate—illustrates why New York, one of America’s densest cities, is still underserved in key business categories such as food retailing. A 2009 study by the Bloomberg administration estimated that New York needed 100 more supermarkets to serve its residents adequately and was losing $1 billion in sales a year as shoppers left the city to buy food.
[. . .]
Mayor de Blasio’s policies will only make New York more expensive and unequal.
[. . .]
the city’s new progressive coalition of city council members, most with zero private-sector experience,
[. . .]
council members have so little regard for businesses—especially small minority operators
[. . .]
The city should lower its regressive local-sales levy
[. . .]
What de Blasio doesn’t seem to recall is that the Charles Dickens novel he invokes is foremost a tale about the damage that a coercive government does to its own people.
Mayor de Blasio’s policies will only make New York more expensive and unequal.
[. . .]
the city’s new progressive coalition of city council members, most with zero private-sector experience,
[. . .]
council members have so little regard for businesses—especially small minority operators
[. . .]
The city should lower its regressive local-sales levy
[. . .]
What de Blasio doesn’t seem to recall is that the Charles Dickens novel he invokes is foremost a tale about the damage that a coercive government does to its own people.
STEVEN MALANGA
The Cost of New York
Government overreach is to blame for Bill de Blasio’s tale of two cities.
Summer 2014
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