Posted on 02/06/2011 12:21:18 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The Great Recession was supposed to clobber New York, but the city is doing just fine. Its unemployment rate is below the national average. Per-capita earnings in the New York metropolitan area remain 40% above the American metropolitan average. Housing prices have declined less than they have almost anywhere else.
How has New York remained so strong? The secret to the city’s enduring strength is not a specific industry or a political leader but rather its unequaled ability to bring millions of people together and enable them to educate each other. Humanity’s greatest gift is our ability to learn from the people around us. No place has ever done that better than New York.
That fact wasn’t always evident. Like all of America’s historic cities, New York was born on waterways and raised on rail; the city’s seminal industries — sugar refining, publishing, garment manufacturing — grew because New York was a transportation hub with easy access to key inputs, like raw Caribbean sugar and pirated English novels. But over the 20th century, cheaper transportation sparked the flight of manufacturing from older cities to lower-cost areas, like right-to-work states and poorer countries. New York’s garment industry, America’s largest industrial cluster in the 1950s, almost disappeared. Rising crime and public mismanagement accompanied economic decline. To most observers, New York’s future looked dark.
But it turned out that globalization would have an unexpected dividend — making good ideas more valuable than they’d ever been before. The preeminence of ideas played right into New York’s strengths. People once thought that new technologies, such as telecommuting, would make cities obsolete.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Still have no desire to live there.
Ditch those libs running your city and watch it really grow.
They put up a nobody again Bloomberg and he still nearly lost. The voters are wising up.
Where’s the barf alert?
Pass me the salt please.
I get tired of reading this bunk about New York City—about how tough the people there are.
There fact is, people immigrated to New York and stayed there. Others went off to cross the country, into the unknown in covered wagons, on horseback or on foot, with no guarantee of foodstuffs, safety or health. The pioneers who left risked their families and themselves to populate and build America into a great nation.
The New Yawkers stayed home.
NYC does so well because it cannibalizes the rest of the state. Because of it’s size it can by force of law steal the state’s resources.
There is nothing there for me.Never met a big city that I liked.
Brought people together? was that a sci-fi show I watched on the news regarding the mosque on ground zero and the protests? or on the unions threatening Wal-mart? salaries are high in the city due to bailouts and union pay scales which are on the backs of the taxpayers...both federal and state.
Ethics? does Charlie Rangel come to mind. Hatemongers? Farrakhan ring a bell? you can have New York!
On the other hand, you have to admit that NYC is a good place to keep them.
One of the things that helped in the resurgence of New York City is CRIME FIGHTING.
The tough on crime policy started with Rudy Giuliani and continued for over a decade under Michael Bloomberg
See here :
http://www.govtech.com/public-safety/New-York-City-Safest.html
EXCERPT
“The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report is further proof that our crime fighting strategies are keeping New York City ahead of the curve,” said John Feinblatt, the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator. “Whether it’s working to take illegal guns off the street or reduce domestic violence, we are always searching for new ways to keep New Yorkers safer. We didn’t become the safest big city in the country by being passive, and we will continue to pair data with innovative ideas in order to keep cutting crime to historic levels.”
For 2007, the total crime index in New York City was 2,432.3 crimes per 100,000 people. Out of the 245 cities with a population of 100,000 or more that reported to the FBI, New York City ranked 230th between Santa Clarita, California and Rancho Cucamonga, California. Out of the nation’s 10 largest cities, New York City had the lowest Index Crime rate. Out of the nation’s 25 largest cities, New York ranked safest, scoring the lowest.
So why haven’t Detroit and Cleveland captured this same “magic”? Why do people not eagerly commute there the way they do to Manhattan, and instead flee as quickly as they are able?
The fact is, NYC could very easily have gone that way if 80s-90s trends continued. What happened was that they elected Rudy (a name which does not appear in the article). Politics does matter.
The abortion capital of the U.S. No thanks.
Where’s the barf bag tag?
RE: So why haven’t Detroit and Cleveland captured this same “magic”?
One word -— CRIME, or if you wish, two words — PEACE AND ORDER.
If government is tasked with one important job it is this -— KEEP THE PLACE SAFE FROM CRIMINALS.
Say what you will about New York City, but it has done this ONE IMPORTANT GOVERNMENT FUNCTION extraordinarily well for close to 2 decades.
What many people fear most is a return to the days of David Dinkins.
Rudy did turn the cesspool around.
20 years from now when most of the population forgets what a cesspool it was in the “70s and ‘80s it could turn around again.
NYC’s a great place is many ways, probably the most interesting city on Earth
Nevertheless it’s got TONs of problems, and being “green” I highly doubt. I bet there’s more trashed out neighborhoods, alleys, unclean/unhealthy restaurants, rats, etc. than one can imagine. All those people crammed in there has got to be an environmental mess, especially with all the welfare/Third World types could give a rat’s behind about cleaniness and energy.
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