Bill de Blasio has been telling a story to New Yorkers for months: the “tale of two cities” (an allusion to the novel of the same name by Charles Dickens), one of the rich, the other of the poor. The Democratic candidate for mayor of New York has made inequality his main campaign theme. With some success. In September, he handily won his party’s primary by distancing himself from the policy pursued in this area by the current mayor, the independent Michael Bloomberg. And, for the November 5 election, he appears as the big favorite, with more than 45 points ahead in the polls over his Republican rival, Joe Lhota.
Bill de Blasio plays on velvet. The city (8.2 million inhabitants in 2011), a Democrat at heart, wants to turn the page after three mandates of Michael Bloomberg. If the latter has continued the work of his Republican predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani, to make New York the safest metropolis in the United States, the billionaire’s social record is more difficult to convince. It is true that, in a city where an apartment can find a buyer at 125 million dollars (90 million euros), a parking lot at 1 million and a hamburger at 295 dollars, the inequalities are obvious. The wealth gaps in New York are nothing new, but they have never been greater. Thus, the richest 1%, who earn more than $ 500,000 per year, total 36% of New Yorkers’ income. A proportion that has tripled since 1980, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a left-wing think tank. Admittedly, the same movement has been observed across the country, but in smaller proportions: the richest 1% represented 10% of total income thirty years ago, against 20% today.
Manhattan is where the disparity is most glaring. The bottom 20% earn an average of $ 9,681 per year, compared to $ 391,000 for the top 20%. This ratio of one to forty is slightly lower than that of countries such as Namibia or Sierra Leone. If the poverty rate in New York remains lower than that of other large American cities such as Cleveland or Detroit, it is however increasing in all categories of the population: Hispanics, those over 65, the inhabitants of Manhattan and those of Queens . Globally, it went from 20.1% in 2010 to 21.2% in 2012. Today there are nearly 1.7 million New Yorkers living below the poverty line ($ 18,530 per year for a household of three). More than 750,000 inhabitants try to subsist on less than half of this sum. As for the beneficiaries of food vouchers paid by the federal administration, their number rose from 19.3% to 20.6% over the same period.
ACROBATIC REASONING
Another indication of the deterioration of the situation in New York: the median income (half of the population earns less and the other half earns more). This, adjusted for inflation, fell by 4% between 1999 and 2011 and hovers around 49,500 dollars. At the same time, constrained spending (housing, electricity, gas, etc.) increased 8.5%, the highest increase of major US cities.
To those who accuse him of having been the mayor of the rich, Michael Bloomberg replies that he has triggered a dynamic supposed to benefit everyone, recalling that 335,000 jobs have been created since the economic recovery. The problem is that some of these poorly paid jobs do not lift people out of poverty. Thus, among the 50,000 homeless registered in municipal shelters, 16% have a job. But their salary is insufficient to pay rent.
September 7, in an interview with New York MagazineMichael Bloomberg tried to put the situation in perspective by pointing out that the incomes of the poorest New Yorkers are 20% higher than in any other city in the United States. The current mayor also embarked on an acrobatic reasoning by saying that, compared to other countries, the poor of New York did not have to complain, under the pretext that they have, them, the air conditioning or car. Michael Bloomberg finally explained that the best way to help those who have nothing is to attract more rich people to New York. “They are the ones who foot the bill, he said. There is a group in this city that pays for services for another. “ Another way to tell the story of the two cities.
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