Comments by "" (@hewitc) on "NYC is Broken… And There’s No Way To Fix It" video.

  1. People blame "politics" but NYC has had its ups and downs regardless of politics. Crime is the product of joblessness. Covid eliminated many jobs in the basic services sector as restaurants and other service businesses had to remain closed. Business is now picking up and creating jobs. That will help the crime problem. Just like it always has in the past 50 years.
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  2. The whole "no more office workers" issue sounds exactly like the "all the manufacturing is leaving" from the 1960's, or back in 1920 when the moving picture business was going to California. Not every type of office work can be done remotely. Not everyone just stares at a computer all day typing away.
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  3.  @mr.patriotjol  The mob killed each other, not civilians.
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  4.  @benfelps  In the 1970-1980's the population was under 8 million. The latest data (2021) shows it is 8.8 million
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  5.  @peterwelby  If the USA had tight immigration laws NYC wouldn't exist. It was built by immigrants who came through Ellis Island. There were no restrictions on entry other than not being sick with cholera. You didn't need to speak English or read or write, just $25 in your pocket. Those are the people who made NYC.
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  6. If New York follows the trends in the red states, concealed carry will be legal. Don't need metal detectors if everyone is allowed to pack a sidearm, or worse.
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  7.  @roythousand13  Sounds like a big town but a small city. Of course it's relative. In China 8 million is a small city.
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  8.  @pedrogaraj6380  "Amenities" didn't exist until decades later. I knew plenty of Village residents, mostly with college degrees, who weren't addicts of any kind. But they lived in walk up tenements with rats and roaches. Some had baths in the kitchen with a toilet outside down the hall. Of course no air conditioning, elevator, doorman or "stainless steel appliances". One 15 amp fuse, bars on the windows, sagging floors, plaster falling down, etc. "Gyms" were for professional boxers only. 1970's rents for these apartments were $120-160/mo. When you're in your 20's living on your own earnings and just starting in the job market this is what you did to live in NYC. "Addicts" lived on the street, mostly in the Bowery. The were either "junkies" or "winos".
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  9.  @glengamble526  Today young people rarely seem to know any history. They have so much "present" to keep up with, I guess. The stock market crash of 1987 was devastating for the economy, especially real estate. They never heard of it, or Ivan Boesky or Milken. Zero.
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  10.  @ThisNameWasTaken0  Very few people in their 20's can afford to live on their own, unless the parents are paying. But that's been true for decades.
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  11. "Gritty NY" was appealing to those who wanted to live on "the edge". Not good for family types but great for artists. The Greenwich Village folk music scene is a good example. Bob Dylan and company lived in places that today's millennials wouldn't ever dream of living in. "No washer dryer? No amenities or fitness center?" Try no toilet in the apartment-- it's down the hall. But not for most people.
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  12. NYC has been unaffordable for most working class people for the last 50 years. Does anyone think that doormen and building service people also live where they work? they have been commuting in from Queens for decades. And they can't "remote work".
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  13.  @glengamble526  Whenever I hear someone say "Now more than ever" or "times have never been as stressful" I know I am listening to with someone young with no life experience or someone old with a short memory. Remember "duck and cover" for little kids? That was about nuclear holocaust and the end of the world. Can't get more stressful than that.
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  14.  @Sebastian-eg6xo  Well it's a nice place to live!
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  15.  @alvarojneto  It's insane to think that "criminality... is perpetuated for political purposes". What politician would try to create more crime while he is in office? Crime levels are the result of the frustration due to lack of opportunity for the lower class.
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  16. In 1990 the real estate market in NYC was devastated. Literally every commercial building on Broadway from Wall Street down to Battery Park had been foreclosed on and was owned by the lenders. The owners lost all equity. Throughout the city there were empty storefronts with for rent signs. This was the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1987 and other economic issues. Most condo/coop owners were underwater with their mortgages. In 1991 things started to come back. By 1995 things were much better.
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  17.  @le4905  I agree. "All the energy!" I don't need any more energy in my life.
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  18.  @rasheedahtalib2361  If you got the energy, great. I lived in NYC for 45 years. I love the place but I don't want to keep doing it.
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  19. Today's subways are 200% better than they were in the 20th century. People now take air condiditoning for grante.
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  20.  @DGP888  What do you mean by "woke"? How is it worse? There used to be homeless people living in cartons littered with crack vials. Carjackings. Prostitutes soliciting on Park Ave So. It's much better now. "Woke" definition: "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)" How can that be a bad thing. Are you a racist?
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  21.  @trans-octopusspacealien8883  Since immigration was the source of all of the population in NYC since the time the English arrived and the Dutch who arrived first complained about them as being uncouth foreignors, I have no idea what possible time period you are descibing that was better. Changed the city for the worse from what? When? Do you mean it was better when the native Americans were the sole inhabitants?
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  22.  @stuartlee6622  Giuliani's crime policies did nothing for the crime rate in NYC. In his term crime declined by the same rate as all other American cities, according to the FBI statistics. The national economy played a much bigger role. But Rudy did screw the NY Fire Deptartment on 9/11. It was the outdated analog communications equipment that he forced on NYPD (being sold by one of his donors) that kept the fire fighters from hearing the call for evacuation from the WTC. The firemen's widows hate the guy.
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  23.  @jens7898  Only to conspiracy nuts.
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  24.  @jamesjohnson1050  They're ignorant. don't they teach history in school anymore?
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  25.  @jens7898  Why? What's on the TV that's so bad? Netflix, Apple +, Amazon Prime?
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  26.  @georgeyoung1810  NYC politics has been the same for over 50 years. I has always attracted ambitious people from all over the world. but it's not for thos who want to live a predictable life in the burbs.
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  27.  @jens7898  doesn't sound like it would take much to control your mind. Stop reading Pravda.
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  28.  @brandtc.7991  Giuliani took credit for the drop in NYC crime but FBI statistics show that the crime level fell nationally at the same level as NYC. It was the product of an improved national economy, not anything giuliani did, like arrest "sqeegee men" (homeless people).
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  29.  @Sebastian-eg6xo  Have you ever been to the upper east side?
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  30.  @ceecee7879  Florida needs an income tax, otherwise the services are going completely to hell. Clean water is a big problem that will take tons of money to fix. The politics of the state are controlled by the sugar cane business which is a major polluter of air and water.
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  31. @anon google account They will do what lower income people who work in NYC have done for decades -- commute for an hour each way.
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  32. People come from every country to live there. But London and Hong Kong are more expensive places to live. Rents in those citites are higher. and you get less.
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  33. "Nobody goes there anymore -- it's too crowded" Yogi Berra
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  34.  @loisen  There are too many subway stops in the city to modify them so there are limited entrances. It's probably also a fire hazard to limit the number of exits.
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  35.  @le4905  I heard that Austin was the only good place to live in Texas.
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  36.  @rasheedahtalib2361  You're younger. Go for it!!
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  37. I said this before here but it is well documented that the decrease in crime during the Giuliani years was completely consistent with the decrease in crime in all American cities, according to the FBI. Giuliani was an expert at taking credit. After 9/11 he became an "expert" on how cities could avoid terroism and made a fortune through his consulting firm. That is sickly ironic. The guy whose city is the only one in American history to suffer such a tragedy sells himself for $Millons on how not to be like him??
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