Paul Krugman - New York Times Blog
 

 September 16, 2013, 9:11 am

 The Political Economy of Bloombergism

 Daniel Little has a nice survey essay on Saskia Sassen's concept
 of the global city.

 These are cities that concentrate high-level coordination
 functions for the global economy - finance, in particular - and
 exhibit extraordinary concentrations of wealth as a consequence.
 New York and London are the prime examples; Tokyo also shows up
 on Sassen's list, although I'd say that it's a lot less global
 than the others, thanks to the continuing insularity of Japanese
 culture. If I had to make a guess, I wouldn't be surprised if
 Seoul, rather than Tokyo, ends up becoming the true global city
 of East Asia.

 If you're interested in this stuff, you should also read John
 Quiggin's cynical but plausible take Quiggin suggests that the
 reason finance and similar activities concentrate in a handful
 of global cities isn't because that produces gains in economic
 efficiency, it's because of the enhanced opportunities for
 cronyism; it's a lot easier to make implicitly corrupt deals
 when you have lunch in the same restaurants and your kids go to
 the same expensive private school.

 Just as an aside, I love New York, which has become a far
 friendlier place than legend has it, which has cultural
 resources like noplace else, and is actually a pretty easy place
 to live if you have enough money. In a perverse way, it's even a
 place where - for someone like me, anyway - the psychological
 urge to participate in the money rat race is largely absent. No
 matter how much you make, there are people nearby who make so
 much more that your income looks ridiculous, so you don't ever
 think of measuring yourself that way.

 Oh, and the subway is a miraculous form of transportation. Of
 course, all these happy thoughts rely on the fact that I have
 enough money to afford a comfortable apartment, eat out whenever
 I feel like it, and so on. And that seemingly modest lifestyle
 requires an income that would be considered very high anywhere
 else.

 But back to my main point, a further thought: as the Bloomberg
 era draws to a close in New York, there has been a fair amount
 of speculation on why Bloomberg was such a success but
 Bloombergism - his mix of social liberalism and pro-finance
 economic policy - has been such a bust on the national political
 scene. As Jonathan Chait reminds us, pundits wrote column after
 column boosting Bloomerg as a model for the rest of American
 politics, urging Bloomberg himself to run as a third-party
 candidate, whatever; Bloomberg, they claimed, represented the
 kind of centrist, nonpartisan position Americans yearned for.
 All of this went precisely nowhere.

 And I think the concept of New York as a global city - a hub of
 worldwide finance, and worldwide cronyism - explains why.
 Bloombergism played well with the global elite, which really
 doesn't care what other people do in their bedrooms but cares a
 lot about being left free to rake in the moolah, which judges a
 man not by the color of his skin but by the size of his
 portfolio. The elite wanted, and got, a well-run city, which
 included reasonable public services; the cruder forms of
 anti-government sentiment never had much home in New York. Even
 a bit of redistribution was OK, if it seemed to contribute to a
 nicer environment in which to enjoy the remaining 99.9 percent
 of one's income. In the end, by the way, de Blasio will probably
 be accepted by the 1 percent, since his program will end up
 being seen as essentially one of slightly moderating inequality
 in everyone's interest.

 But the rest of America is nothing like that. And it's a measure
 of the insularity of many pundits that they imagined that the
 politics of a city that is really like nothing else in America -
 and resembles only a couple of other places in the world -
 somehow represented the national center.



BOB KLAHN bob.klahn@sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... Freedom's just another word for nothing left to eat.->Republican Version.
--- Via Silver Xpress V4.5/P [Reg]
 * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 Join Us: www.DocsPlace.org (1:123/140)