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.   
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