Feb
24
Blog Post #4 / Class #8
February 24, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Inequality in New York City is blatantly obvious. There are things you notice right away why you are in the city. Upscale restaurants and stores line the streets while numerous homeless people wander on those same streets. Cramped apartments in the city cost a leg and an arm and still people scramble to find roommates. Even food options– affordable and healthy, are scarce.
Research from CUNY Graduate center puts a number on that inequality. What really interested me is the income majority in comparison to population majority. The only one that seemed equal was the Asian population at about 13%. It wasn’t all that surprising to see that Whites controlled a greater percentage in accordance to their population but what was discouraging was just how much they controlled. I was expecting probably about 40% but the result was more than half of the city’s income. What’s worse is that the rich have only been increasing in their control of income while the middle class has been decreasing. Therein lies the problem I have with capitalism. The rich inherently get richer.
While capitalism creates opportunities for the few, it puts others at a serious handicap. The poor and middle class struggle to make ends meet and once in a while we hear of one of them breaking out and getting famously rich. But they are the exception. A majority of wealthy people were already wealthy. They already had money to attend renowned private institutions. They already had the capital to risk starting a new business. And they already had the connections to push their business.
In the article “What the Rich Give to New York”, the author points out the good points about capitalism in NYC. One being that they pay extremely high taxes and another being that they donate to many of the public facilities in the city. She points to these advantages occurring because the rich have a stake in all of those facilities. While I do feel that is true to some degree, the author fails to note that donating also helps the rich get a tax break. She also constantly promotes a poor man standing next to a rich man in NYC and yet fails to realize that the “rich man” is certainly not as rich as you’d think. A generous, philanthropic rich man in New York would live in an area like Tribeca where, as the New Yorker article points out, the median income is $205,192 and where he wouldn’t think about taking the train at all, he’d take a taxi. And he wouldn’t be sunbathing next to that poor man in Central Park, he’d be sunbathing on top of his penthouse rooftop instead. The “rich man” the author notes is more upper middle class, and he certainly won’t be the one donating millions of dollars for a tax break.
The interactive subway income map in the New Yorker model puts income equality in New York City in a way that every commuter understands. To see the the disparity between the incomes as the trains travel across the different neighborhoods is striking. Watching the 6 train line start high in lower Manhattan and immediately plummet down in the streets above 100 tells you exactly how the rich and the poor are spread. Knowing these facts and knowing this inequality exists, is the first step in solving the problem.
