All I Do Is Win, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

November 9, 2013 Martha Thomases 7 Comments

Despite its reputation, New York is not a liberal city.  As evidence, I would point to the last two decades, when we have had Republican mayors.  We also had George Pataki as governor for a long, long time, but that’s a statewide office, and perhaps you won’t accept it as evidence.

But, no, New York City is not inherently leftist.  Democrats don’t have it locked up.

New York is complicated, a mixture of people from all over the world, living close together.  We speak hundreds of different languages, with even more frames of reference.  On the two-block street on which I live, there are people who live in a $35 million house and people who live in rent stabilized apartments.  Just to go to work in the morning (or the evening), or go to the store to get a bottle of milk, one has to either venture outside one’s natural comfort zone, or redefine “comfort zone.”

 

And so, Bill deBlasio.

The national media is portraying this as some kind of radical move by the McGovern wing of the Democratic party (note:  that is exaggeration for effect. I will not supply a source).  Instead, I think it’s an example of New Yorkers acknowledging that their city is complicated.

The reason I moved to New York, way way back in the 1970s, was to participate in these complications.  (Also, for the sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.)  Where I grew up, in Ohio, I lived in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Jewish and middle class.  Where I went to high school, in Connecticut, almost everyone was white, Christian and upper middle class (and, probably in many cases, outright rich).  To be in New York was to be in a wonderland of people, of color and sound and smells and tastes.

In Ohio, I knew people who locked their doors if they saw black people walking down the sidewalk.  In New York, I ride in packed subway cars full of people who were black, white, and every other color available to humans.

We get along with each other.  Not every single person every single day, but most of us most of the time.  We must, not because we are somehow spiritually awakened but because otherwise there is no time to do anything else.  And New Yorkers have shit to do.

Over the last twenty years, New York has lost its edge.  Times Square may no longer have seedy sex shops (they moved to Sixth Avenue, in my neighborhood.  Thanks, Rudy), but there are also more big-box chain stores, fewer quirky individual retailers.  Artists can’t afford to live here when they start out.  Neither can rock bands.

You know who can live here?  Billionaires.  Hedge fund managers.  The next Bernie Madoff.  And, if they don’t do the Ponzi scheming, that’s fine.  They should live and be well and be good neighbors.  New York has always had some of the richest people in the world in residence, and we’re cool with that.

But they have to be good neighbors.  Which means they have to do their part.  In terms of governance, this means they have to pay their share of taxes.

When you hear that deBlasio’s plan to have the rich pay more will drive rich people away, that ship has sailed.  In New York, a lot of rich people only live here for a part of the year, and they pay no city income taxes at all.  Those that can afford multiple residences, and whose jobs permit them to work from wherever they like, will continue to do so.

Even billionaires need staff who can read, write and do math.  So even billionaires need good public schools.  These employees will also need places to sleep, so even billionaires need affordable housing.  It costs a lot to train new employees, so even billionaires need more local hospital beds, not luxury condos, so their current employees don’t die waiting for the ambulance to get through crosstown traffic.

DeBlasio ran a campaign that changed the tone of the city.  It is my hope that, as mayor, his administration will continue this tone.  I’m no longer so naive as to believe he will be able to accomplish everything he wants to do, nor everything I want him to do.  However, I look forward to the effort.

It’s not leftist.  It’s neighborly.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, remains grateful to Fred Rogers for everything he did.