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Have you viewed the map? https://blogs.cornell.edu/livingwage/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/livingwage/ Almost all of the red sections are outside of NYC. They do

Have you viewed the map? https://blogs.cornell.edu/livingwage/ https://blogs.cornell.edu/livingwage/ Almost all of the red sections are outside of NYC. They don't have access to this NYC underground economy. Though The Bronx and Queens are some of the worst-affected areas, Erie and Rochester come up right behind. The racial and ethnic slant is also hard to miss. If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). If you select the Finger Lakes region (5 hours away from NYC), and then select Race-Ethnicity, it couldn't be starker. Workers of Color lights up most of the map in red, with a median income of $16.80-$25.00. Select White Worker, and it's very light red and mostly green, centered around the city, with $21.48-$32.49. White people do well and everybody else struggles.

SilasX 4y ago
>The racial and ethnic slant is also hard to miss. If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). Or, alternatively, that the tax structure of the area is so abusive that the economy depends on tax evasion.
scarmig 4y ago
> If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). The flip side of the coin is that there's a reason people work in illegal ventures: making them fully legal would make them uneconomic, because of a combination of taxes and regulations, and also hurt upward mobility. You see that in places like France, where the youth unemployment rate tends to fall in the 20-25% range. (Though that too gives an overly negative representation of the state of things: France also has a significant shadow economy, so things aren't actually as bad as they might look there.) It's a game of tradeoffs. What's probably ideal is to move as much as possible into the formal economy, regulate only those things which you can actually afford to regulate and enforce, and tax to the extent you don't drive things underground or out of jurisdiction.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I'm not sure the argument that regulations are the cause of decreased social mobility is valid. Germany who have regulatory framework much closer to France than to the US, has lower youth unemployment than the US. The US in general has quite low social mobility compared to many more regulated economies (e.g. the Scandinavian countries typically rank amongst the highest on social mobility despite strong regulations).
  - scarmig 4y ago
    Rankings (particularly by ideological organizations) need to be taken with a large grain of salt, but Heritage has a ranking of regulatory/economic freedom of different countries: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking In it, Denmark > Sweden > Norway > Germany > USA >>> France. The low ranking of the US in particular might be for partisan reasons (i.e. intentionally overstating regulatory burden), but Scandinavian countries, although having large governments, typically have relatively low and transparent levels of regulation and efficient tax systems.
  - jandrewrogers 4y ago
    Social mobility is a term of art that doesn't mean what people intuit it does. I think the question being asked here is "how easy is it to significantly increase your income", which has an inverse correlation with social mobility. The reason for this is that high social mobility is most commonly an artifact of wage compression. Scandinavia has high wage compression, and the US very low wage compression, hence why it is much easier to significantly increase your income in the US than Scandinavia despite lower social mobility.
gen220 4y ago
Yep, if we zoom into the NYC area and filter by "Employer does not provide health insurance", this gives you a better picture. In addition, many of the people would not state that they're employed, FWIW. I agree that the "greater" economy is dependent on the grey economy, which is often exploitative-without-recourse. It's a big issue. I guess I'm trying to say that it's important to analyze the greater economy as-is, not just the easily-measurable economy.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
neither_color 4y ago
The racial and ethnic slant is also hard to miss. If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). You nailed it, only it applies to most of the country and not just New York. The shoddy enforcement and looking the other way is the cost of doing business. Enforce too much and it collapses.
PedroBatista 4y ago
While I generally agree, I wouldn't put that much emphasis on the racial divide ( that it's real ), in NYC it's much more a question of green than black vs white. SOME "White people" do very well, there's an huge population of "white people" in the Bronx and Queens, the few who "make it" go to other boroughs/neighborhoods the others stay or go back to where they came from, which means the Midwest for a large portion of them. Also, public workers in general have done quite well for themselves and that includes a lot of black people and some latinos. So while I somewhat agree with you, this very race focused take distorts the reality quite a bit.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  > this very race focused take distorts the reality quite a bit. I think you might be - whether intentionally or not - avoiding considering the factual evidence here. The whole point of this map is to be physical evidence to show that there is, based on actual evidence, which you can see on a map, a strong racial bias. Do some white people also suffer? Yes. Do more people of color suffer than white people? Yes. Here's more proof, to go along with all the other studies done over decades.
autoexec 4y ago
> If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). Any business that can't afford to pay their workers a living wage and needs to exploit minority communities to stay open should be shuttered. No point letting them keep their failed business at the expense of everyone else. Companies who have been exploiting workers and pocketing the extra profits should either stop exploiting people and just pocket a little less profit or go out of business already and get out of the way so someone more competent can fill public's need for the good/service they offered.
- paledot 4y ago
  This is how I feel about the whole argument against minimum wage increases. Can't figure out a way to pay your employees a living wage and stay in business? Close your business and good riddance, I don't care if you employ 10 people or 10,000.

SilasX 4y ago

>The racial and ethnic slant is also hard to miss. If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). Or, alternatively, that the tax structure of the area is so abusive that the economy depends on tax evasion.

scarmig 4y ago

> If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). The flip side of the coin is that there's a reason people work in illegal ventures: making them fully legal would make them uneconomic, because of a combination of taxes and regulations, and also hurt upward mobility. You see that in places like France, where the youth unemployment rate tends to fall in the 20-25% range. (Though that too gives an overly negative representation of the state of things: France also has a significant shadow economy, so things aren't actually as bad as they might look there.) It's a game of tradeoffs. What's probably ideal is to move as much as possible into the formal economy, regulate only those things which you can actually afford to regulate and enforce, and tax to the extent you don't drive things underground or out of jurisdiction.

cycomanic 4y ago
I'm not sure the argument that regulations are the cause of decreased social mobility is valid. Germany who have regulatory framework much closer to France than to the US, has lower youth unemployment than the US. The US in general has quite low social mobility compared to many more regulated economies (e.g. the Scandinavian countries typically rank amongst the highest on social mobility despite strong regulations).
- scarmig 4y ago
  Rankings (particularly by ideological organizations) need to be taken with a large grain of salt, but Heritage has a ranking of regulatory/economic freedom of different countries: https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking In it, Denmark > Sweden > Norway > Germany > USA >>> France. The low ranking of the US in particular might be for partisan reasons (i.e. intentionally overstating regulatory burden), but Scandinavian countries, although having large governments, typically have relatively low and transparent levels of regulation and efficient tax systems.
- jandrewrogers 4y ago
  Social mobility is a term of art that doesn't mean what people intuit it does. I think the question being asked here is "how easy is it to significantly increase your income", which has an inverse correlation with social mobility. The reason for this is that high social mobility is most commonly an artifact of wage compression. Scandinavia has high wage compression, and the US very low wage compression, hence why it is much easier to significantly increase your income in the US than Scandinavia despite lower social mobility.

gen220 4y ago

Yep, if we zoom into the NYC area and filter by "Employer does not provide health insurance", this gives you a better picture. In addition, many of the people would not state that they're employed, FWIW. I agree that the "greater" economy is dependent on the grey economy, which is often exploitative-without-recourse. It's a big issue. I guess I'm trying to say that it's important to analyze the greater economy as-is, not just the easily-measurable economy.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

neither_color 4y ago

The racial and ethnic slant is also hard to miss. If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). You nailed it, only it applies to most of the country and not just New York. The shoddy enforcement and looking the other way is the cost of doing business. Enforce too much and it collapses.

PedroBatista 4y ago

While I generally agree, I wouldn't put that much emphasis on the racial divide ( that it's real ), in NYC it's much more a question of green than black vs white. SOME "White people" do very well, there's an huge population of "white people" in the Bronx and Queens, the few who "make it" go to other boroughs/neighborhoods the others stay or go back to where they came from, which means the Midwest for a large portion of them. Also, public workers in general have done quite well for themselves and that includes a lot of black people and some latinos. So while I somewhat agree with you, this very race focused take distorts the reality quite a bit.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago
> this very race focused take distorts the reality quite a bit. I think you might be - whether intentionally or not - avoiding considering the factual evidence here. The whole point of this map is to be physical evidence to show that there is, based on actual evidence, which you can see on a map, a strong racial bias. Do some white people also suffer? Yes. Do more people of color suffer than white people? Yes. Here's more proof, to go along with all the other studies done over decades.

autoexec 4y ago

> If the NYC underground economy is indeed the only thing keeping minorities afloat, that means the economy is dependent on exploiting minority communities (keeping them working in illegal ventures, preventing upward mobility). Any business that can't afford to pay their workers a living wage and needs to exploit minority communities to stay open should be shuttered. No point letting them keep their failed business at the expense of everyone else. Companies who have been exploiting workers and pocketing the extra profits should either stop exploiting people and just pocket a little less profit or go out of business already and get out of the way so someone more competent can fill public's need for the good/service they offered.

paledot 4y ago
This is how I feel about the whole argument against minimum wage increases. Can't figure out a way to pay your employees a living wage and stay in business? Close your business and good riddance, I don't care if you employ 10 people or 10,000.