Wednesday May 14, 2003

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK -- PLEASE! NYC's budget woes have got conservatives going after Bloomberg, and good for them, as I dislike our depraved rich-boy mayor at least as much as they do. But they're also starting to run down New York itself -- or, to be more precise, they're reverting to their traditional loathing of Moscow on the Hudson. Brendan "Save Western Civ!" Miniter lets fly a gob of spit headlined "Apple Without Appeal: High taxes are only one reason to hate New York." Makes ya nostalgic, don't it?

Miniter starts by telling us that "except for the very rich, the quality of life in this city is worse than it should be and far below most of the rest of America." That much is true. Part of the reason is that we send a disproportionate number of tax dollars to the Federal Government so that farmland Republicans can ladle them out amongst their constituents. But this reason Miniter leaves unmentioned.

Miniter does mention rent-controlled apartments -- or, rather "rent-controlled or rent-stabilized" apartments. This conflation is mindful, as it gives Miniter's readers the false impression that a large number of lucky New Yorkers are paying $100 a month for suites at the Plaza, and helps put over the conservative howler that this, not the enforced scarcities of large realtors who sit on vacant apartments, is what makes the rent so high. In truth the rent-controlled tenants are dying out or being hounded out, while most of the rent-stabilized apartments, a sizable group, have been around for so long that renters pay something close to market value for them.

Miniter's no better on prescriptions. Consider this:

...the mayor needs to be looking for ways to reduce the cost of living in the city. A good place to start would be to cut taxes and urge the state Legislature to let rent regulation die when it comes up for renewal next month. But it can't stop there. The city needs more housing and business space. The mayor needs to find ways to encourage more construction. That means taking on powerful and entrenched unions and streamlining construction regulations to scrap union work rules...

Let's see: in order to improve our standard of living, we should cut taxes (which, I hate to tell him, means less money for city services that help define quality of life), let landlords jack up rents (which of them will greet the death of rent stabilization by crying, "Good news -- now I can lower your rent"?), build more apartments (out of what, I wonder, that would make them affordable? Cardboard?), and screw the unions (and the hundreds of thousands for whom they negotiate -- whose quality of life, we must assume, will plummet).

There's nothing wrong with being contrarian or counterintuitive, but when Miniter talks nonsense like this and fails to explain how it's supposed to work, he just sounds like some ivory-tower guy shaking his head at us poor sods and muttering, "Don't they know that landlords are a market force, and must be respected?"

As to the rest of the apartments are so small! I saw a rat in the subway! crap, I've long held that the pussies who can't put up with urban life should fuck off to the suburbs and leave the rest of us in peace.