Last week, the New York Post published a great OpEd:
New York City is dead forever
By James Altucher
In it, Mr. Altucher lays out a very compelling case of why NYC is headed the way of Detroit.
No matter what happened to me, NYC was a net I could fall back on and bounce back up.
NYC residents ramp up mass exodus out of Big Apple
Now it’s completely dead. “But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time. “But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time.
“NYC has experienced worse.” No, it hasn’t.
Unlike other dips in NYC history, the New York City Government never played an active role in killing the city. Crime went up, quality of life went down, the economy sucked, but never before had the government actually shut things down.
On top of this, technological improvements in digital and wireless communications have made telework easier than ever.
The average middle-class American can easily afford enough bandwidth and cell phone data to connect to the office with a VPN and host a video conference. That wasn’t possible as little as ten years ago.
Consequently:
Midtown Manhattan, the center of business in NYC, is empty. Even though people can go back to work, famous office buildings like the Time Life skyscraper are still 90% empty. Businesses realized that they don’t need their employees at the office.
In fact, they realize they are even more productive without everyone back to the office. The Time Life building can handle 8,000 workers. Now it maybe has 500 workers back.
“What do you mean?” a friend of mine said to me when I told him, “Midtown should be called ‘Ghost Town’!”
Another friend of mine works at a major investment bank as a managing director. Before the pandemic he was at the office every day, sometimes working from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Now he lives in Phoenix, Arizona. “As of June,” he told me, “I had never even been to Phoenix.” And then he moved there. He does all his meetings on Zoom.
The deliberate shut down of NYC killed the one thing that NYC had going for it. The NYC culture.
We had a show in May. An outdoor show. Everyone social distanced. But we were shut down by the police. I guess we were super-spreading humor during a very serious time. The club is doing something fun: They are doing shows outside in Central Park. This is a great idea.
In a time like this, businesses need to give to the community, not complain and not take. That said, we have no idea when we will open. Nobody has any idea. And the longer we close, the less chance we will ever reopen profitably.
Broadway is closed until at least the spring. Lincoln Center is closed. All the museums are closed.
My favorite restaurant is closed for good. OK, let’s go to my second favorite. Closed for good. Third favorite, closed for good.
What kept New York City going was the argument: “Where else but NYC do you have the best restaurants, theaters, museums, and shopping in the world all in one place.”
That may have been true.
Now, by order of Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio, the restaurants, theaters, and museums are closed or limited capacity in perpetuity, and the storefronts are all closed and boarded up from riots.
That’s gone. The people who supported them are gone.
The taxes are high, the crime is high, and the anchor that kept people in or coming back to NYC is gone.
There is no compelling reason to stay, beyond the mantra “New York City is the greatest city on earth,” and that is nothing but empty hubris.
Like a Greek tragedy, that hubris has caused it to die.
Jerry Seinfeld read this OpEd, and knowing as much about economics as his shitty show was about, i.e., nothing, he wrote his own OpEd.
Yes, I think Seinfeld was a shit show, that was never funny. I find no humor in losers losing at everything in a nihilistic setting where no human growth ever occurs.
“The last thing we need in the thick of so many challenges is some putz on LinkedIn wailing and whimpering, ‘Everyone’s gone! I want 2019 back! ‘ Oh, shut up. Imagine being in a real war with this guy by your side.”
That’s not an argument against his points, that’s an ad hominem.
“He says he knows people who have left New York for Maine, Vermont, Tennessee, Indiana. I have been to all of these places many, many, many times over many decades. And with all due respect and affection, Are .. You .. Kidding .. Me?!”
That is just the contempt for anyone who is not from NYC that is a hallmark of the born and bred New Yorker.
“You found a place in Florida? Fine. We know the sharp focus and restless, resilient creative spirit that Florida is all about. You think Rome is going away too? London? Tokyo? The East Village? They’re not. They change. They mutate. They re-form. Because greatness is rare. And the true greatness that is New York City is beyond rare.”
As a Florida boy, fuck Jerry Seinfeld. You want resilience. We lived through Hurricane Andrew and bounced back. Andrew did (not including body count) much more damage to Miami than 9/11 did to NYC. Half the city was stripped down to the concrete slab. We rebuilt. We did it again and again, coming back stronger after each hurricane, until the point where anything short of a Cat4 is “just a little wind.”
Miami has become a food and art capital of America. Miami is a pop culture and entertainment influencer. To ignore that is just arrogance.
Also, Rome did fall. The Roman Empire collapsed in the 4th Century and didn’t come back until the Renaissance a thousand years later.
London is dying. Young people in Tokyo are not fucking. So yes, once-great cities fall. So will New York City.
“I have been onstage at your comedy club Stand Up N.Y. quite a few times. It could use a little sprucing up, if you don’t mind my saying. I wouldn’t worry about it. You can do it from Miami.”
Why spruce up a club that cannot be opened by order of the Mayor.
Seinfeld’s “argument” is nothing more than bloviating arrogance. The same arrogance that killed the city in the first place.
Seinfeld can say that he will never abandon NYC, which means he will be the last entertainer standing outside of a boarded-up comedy club doing his routine for a bunch of drugged-up vagrants shitting in the streets.
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