Reaganomics Takes Manhattan

New York Magazine’s Daniel Gross wants us to believe that there is a trickle-down effect of “ridiculous wealth”, and sommeliers all over the city should be counting their lucky stars.

Point taken — rich bastards spend absurd amounts of money propping up an absurd service economy, but I’m skeptical. Doesn’t the housing market — one in which a frightening number of New Yorkers spend more than 50 percent of their income on — quickly become unaffordable as average housing prices rise? To be sure, it’s part of their “to be sure” paragraph:

Before we get too carried away in enumerating all the great gifts New Yorkers humbly receive from the very rich, let’s admit some limits. The ever-climbing cost of living hits us all. It’s not just the price of apartments; everything from sneakers to a jug of milk costs more here and prices are rising fast. The Consumer Price Index in New York City has been growing at a 30 percent greater clip than the national rate. For the vast majority of people, inflation cuts directly into their standard of living.

As for real estate, if this boom does turn into bubble, the really rich will be bummed, but they’ll disappear for a week to St. Barts and return good as new. People with mortgages they can barely swing—like those three-year, fixed-rate, interest-only “deals”—could be wiped out.

But it’s inescapable. Of course rich people make our lives better — they fix Central Park, they contribute to MoMA, they subsidize two operas (take that, L.A.!). So on behalf of the squeezed middle class all over the city, thank you for helping us eke out a living.