After McCain's financial advisor Phil Gramm (who has since been demoted) stood behind his initial remarks that we are a nation of whiners and that the economy is just peachy, we find even more whining in the press, this time originating from the City of New York. NYC is the financial capitol of our country and one of the leading international cities in terms of culture and wealth, yet one in four New Yorkers now live in poverty.
From The Gothamist:
Yesterday, weather apparently prevented Mayor Bloomberg from giving a speech at the NAACP convention in Cleveland yesterday, but, in his place, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said the city found 23% of NYC residents are living in poverty, above the 19% the U.S. Census Bureau found.The city's numbers are higher because the Bloomberg administration opted to use a different measure taking into account NYC's high living expenses. For instance, the federal formula doesn't include things like housing, child care, and clothing in its calculations. The federal formula uses $20,444 for a family of four as the cut-off, while the city's formula uses $25,138 for a family of four. The city will use its findings to "recalculate the distribution of certain city benefits"
Bloomberg's prepared text had him remarking, "So in Washington, while there's a never-ending debate about how to confront poverty, there is hardly any clarity on who is actually poor. I spent most of my career in the private sector, and I'm a big believer in the saying, 'If you can't measure it, you can't manage it." The city wants to share its model with other cities in order to spur changes in how poverty is measured.
Of course, as his policies have shown, Bloomberg has never really been a big fan of helping out the poor. Cutting programs for the poor (although not to the degree that his predecessor undertook) has come as a priority in order to spur the gentrification in the city that Bloomberg so desires. To his credit though, at least he is beginning to show that the official poverty line the census bureau uses is bogus. Other than that, this is further proof that many of our leaders have turned a blind eye to the fiscal problems of not only New York, but the nation as a whole....no matter if those that have profited off of our collective misery call it "mental delusion."
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