Reading Mike Wallace’s take on implementing the WPA to today’s New York really lit some bulbs in my head. The WPA in the 30’s was able to cut down unemployment rates while simultaneously improving the community of New York. One of the main issues New York faces in this era of economic instability is unemployment. I don’t know too much about economics besides what I learned in my Macro-economics course, but I believe that, in mending New York’s economy, we should take a bottom-up approach. What I mean by that in a nutshell, is focusing on first, those that are unemployed, then small business, and then big enterprises.
A lot of effort has gone into focusing on maintaining big companies in New York, and by a lot of effort, I mean a lot of tax money. Mike Wallace mentions the 2 billion dollars in assorted tax breaks lost to preventing major companies from leaving. The money did prevent many major companies from leaving town, companies that have significant impact in New York’s economy, however we should analyze, as Wallace did, both the results and the opportunity cost of such actions.
Our economy over the course of the 12 years of this action has not seen overall grade A improvement. Sure, maybe some big companies are doing fantastic, which is in a way a good thing for our economy, but what about the smaller businesses? Currently, small business are being challenged by this fiscal cliff and the uncertainty it brings for them among other growing problems. Also, what about the increasing unemployment rates over the past few years? Are these the results of a rising economy? I think not.
I believe we should allocate our resources in a way that follows in the footsteps of the WPA as Mike Wallace suggests. I feel that following “Bloomberg’s Way” and structuring New York as this “luxurious city” is not the right solution to fix all the levels of New York’s economy. As people have already mentioned, this comes from the CEO mayor outlook. Bloomberg’s plan simply seeks to raise revenue in New York. While that’s a great thing, I feel that it won’t fix our unemployment rates. If we can focus on fixing unemployment and helping out small business, I believe our economy could be well on its way up. However, this of course brings several issues to the table that I’m afraid I cannot account for considering my poor background in economics and politics.
