Nice to see that all the people who actually make the city function -- so that those high-paid "value providers" can live there and get work done there -- are completely written off in your analysis.
You are mistaking the inhabitants for the city balance sheet. The inhabitants might be rich, but that doesn't mean the city government has the resources.
I know it sounds simple but local city councils have much of the blame here. They are underpowered to deal with the influx of workers for the past two decades making the salaries necessary to attract people.
The only backward value apparent from this article is an extreme defecit in holding people accountable. One could argue that every other value must be phenomenal since it is still a thriving city despite this impairment.
The people blasting the city claim the city isn't doing enough, and when shown that they are actually are providing a remarkable amount of support, it still isn't enough. 12-20k annually is more than a significant chunk of the population earns in wages.
Huh? The person giving hundreds of millions of dollars isn't working for the community?
That quote was expressing his concern about a municipal death spiral of Higher Taxes & Austerity because the city's budget was so underwater from decreased economic activity (Rust-Belt)
Not every city is like this. Rich cities that can systematically screw people and get away with it are like this because business like this one aren't a large enough overall part of their revenue stream for them to care about.
Poor cities can't systematically marginalize small business without hurting themselves enough to be held accountable so they don't generally do this kind of thing or when they do they fix the system quickly.
It’s completely irrelevant to the topic at hand: Cities are not having problems maintaining their infrastructure because of politicians & building firms lining each others pockets - they are having problems maintaining their infrastructure because it is economically impossible for them to do so.
Self-serving hand-wringing about corruption in politics does nothing to solve this problem. It’s just an excuse to justify not doing anything.
In context, they clearly are referring to the municipal government when they say the city shouldn't exist, not to the physical collection of people and infrastructure.
> They are all "elected" officials so therefore "directly" "accountable".
Please look into how campaign funding works. The fundamental problem is that if you employ half of the city, you have quite a bit more leverage than the mayor.
Nice to see that all the people who actually make the city function -- so that those high-paid "value providers" can live there and get work done there -- are completely written off in your analysis.
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