For decades, New York City had run a generous municipal welfare system that marked the left-most edge of New Deal politics. In addition to fire and police departments, to public schools and public transportation, the city ran a network of child care centers, senior centers and municipal hospitals. T ...more
Between 1945 and 1975, New York City functioned like an island of social democracy in the United States: free universal higher education, accessible health care, free or affordable day care. Due to deindustrialization, suburbanization, and economic crisis, though, by the mid 70s the city faced decli ...more
The financial crisis of New York City in the mid-seventies was a microcosm of the crisis of postwar liberalism (Europeans read Social Democracy). New York city was on the verge of bankruptcy and state and federal government including the Ford Administration decided not to bail NYC out and left the c ...more
Naomi Klein has said that when her book “The Shock Doctrine” came out, that one place many have said she left out, was what happened in New York City during the 70s. She refers to this work in her latest book and insisting that this does a fine job of telling the story and she isn’t wrong.
Do you ever wonder why our pundits blather endlessly about deficits? Has it ever vexed you how Amazon can pay zero federal taxes while receiving offers from dozens of municipalities worth billions? Or perhaps you are curious why in New York, one of the wealthiest locales on earth, thousands of peopl ...more
Good telling of the events that created the NYC fiscal crisis in 1970s and the austerity policies that followed and their consequences to the city.
The important thing to realize is that while the budget cuts improved the city's revenue and credit standings, they did not improve the lives of the peo ...more
Not only an amazing read on a specific and important era in New York's history, but also an important reminder for the Left to see how far we've fallen. This represents the decline of the New Deal and the rise of Neo-Liberalism that we have to reckon with now. ...more
This was interesting, but a little too focused on the small-ball aspects of new York's 1970s fiscal crisis. Maybe I just wish this had been part of a larger fabric of the 60s/70s urban crises and the subsequent conservative insurgency. ...more
An enjoyable analysis of the financial problems that NYC faced during the 1970s as it went to the cliff of bankruptcy. This historical tackles deep economic assumptions and lessons learned from the crises, avoiding blame on any single cause (unlike the politicians of the time, who searched for easy ...more