New York City fears return to 1970s

[bananas]

Source: Reuters

New York City fears return to 1970s
Tue Jan 27, 2009 3:48pm EST
By Joan Gralla

NEW YORK (Reuters) - While many U.S. cities worry that their economies are deteriorating to the level of the 1930s Great Depression, New York City fears reliving a more recent decade that features strongly in city lore.

The 1970s were a low point in city history as a fiscal crisis almost pushed it into bankruptcy, crime rates soared, and homeless people crowded sidewalks as public services crumbled.

Almost a million people fled New York's Mean Streets during the decade for the safer, more stable suburbs, a population decline that took more than 20 years to reverse.

<snip>

"I know some are concerned that city services will erode," he recently told reporters. "Let me remind you that the city went down that road in the 1970s ... I can just tell you that we are not going to make that mistake again."

<snip>

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE50Q6IH20090127?sp=true

[rusty quoin]

1. 'gunshot victims are more likely to survive'

That's a plus.

[David Dunham]

2. Cutting fat city workers' pensions will be a good start to avoid this problem

[defendandprotect]

6. We need to return to progressive taxation on the rich and corporations . . .

close all the loopholes --- and also stop the GOP's attacks on liberal areas.

And the pension funds --- as far as what I've read --- have all been underfunded

and many ready for collapse --- our next crisis?

This is of course corporations in collusion with right-wing corrupt government!

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. What a mess.... this town's in tatters.

Bite the big apple. Don't mind the maggots......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfTRJ3ZtluM

[Hannah Bell]

4. Sheesh. The financiers PUSHED them down that road. Part of the larger neo-lib revolution.

"The recession of 1973-1975 diminished tax revenues at all levels at a time of rising demand for social expenditures. Deficits emerged everywhere as a key problem. Something had to be done about the fiscal crisis of the state. The restoration of fiscal discipline was es­sential. This empowered those financial institu­tions that controlled the lines of credit to the state.

In 1975 they refused to roll-over the debt of New York City and forced the city close to the edge of bankruptcy. A powerful cabal of bankers joined to­gether with state power to discipline the city.

This meant curbing the aspirations of the city’s powerful municipal unions, lay-offs in public employment, wage freezes, cut -backs in social provision (education, public health, transport services) and imposi­tion of user fees (tuition was introduced in the CUNY university system for the first time).

The bail-out entailed the construction of new institu­tions that had first rights to city tax revenues in or­der to pay off bond holders: whatever was left went into the city budget for essential services. The final indignity was the requirement that municipal un­ions invest their pension funds in city bonds to make sure that unions moderated their demands to avoid the danger of losing their pension funds through city bankruptcy.

This amounted to a coup by the financial institu­tions against the democratically elected govern­ment of New York City and it was every bit as ef­fective as the military coup that had occurred earlier in Chile.

Much of the social infrastructure of the city was destroyed and the physical infrastructure (e.g. the transit system) deteriorated markedly for lack of investment or even maintenance.

The management of the New York fiscal crisis pioneered the way for neoliberal practices both domestically under Rea­gan and internationally through the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s. It established the prin­ciple that in the event of a conflict between the in­tegrity of financial institutions and bond holders on the one hand and the well-being of the citizens on the other, the former was to be preferred. It ham­mered home the view that the role of government was to create a good business climate rather than look to the needs and well-being of the population at large.

Fiscal redistributions of benefit to the upper classes resulted in the midst of a general fiscal crisis....It was almost certainly the aim of then Secretary of the Treasury William Simon who, having watched the progress of events in Chile with approval, refused to give aid to the city and openly stated that he wanted New York City to suffer so badly that no other city in the nation would ever dare take on social obligations in this way again..."

David Harvey, A History of Neoliberalism

http://www.interfacehs.sp.senac.br/en/translations.asp?ed=4&cod_artigo=79&pag=3

[defendandprotect]

5. The GOP has been attacking NYC since the '60's and '70's . . ..

and it hasn't stopped . . . and I'd include 9/11 in that ---

I'd also suspect that like California, the CIA has pushed drugs in NYC ---

and that's another reason why we have to end this fake Drug War ---

it can't exist without cooperation of high level officials -- and corruption

of police enforcement.

[Demeter]

7. NYC Will Look Back on the 70's With Longing in a Few Months

This is the Big One. And they brought it upon themselves and the rest of us.

[northofdenali]

8. NYC has come back from worse.

I'm a small-population/big state person. However, one of the neatest things EVER is to be able to claim New York City as part of "my" America, simply by being a resident of the U.S. There has never been, nor will there ever be, another city like it.

I've seen NYC overcome extraordinary corruption, incredible poverty, boom-and-bust. Because of the city, and it's people, and it's guts and grit, I thank the goddess we'll always have New York. It's one of the few places where (most of the time) the elected officials REMEMBER their fuckups, and don't go there again; they REMEMBER their triumps and fix-its, and keep them in mind for next time.

I :heart: New York, and said that WAY before it became a tongue-in-cheek motto.

Haven't been there since 1970.

Haven't been more impressed with a big city, ever. And I've been to a few.

[Blue_Tires]

9. Travis Bickle redux?

70s NYC may not be that bad after all...French Connection, Saturday Night Fever, Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, mafia wars, Supafly, the Knicks are actually good again, Sinatra live at Madison Square, Warriors, Soylent Green, the infancy of rap music, the list goes on...:silly:

but seriously; if there is a big population exodus, i'd be curious to know where it ends up and how the economies of those destinations sink or swim...the south? the west? canada?