> I'm inclined to share the sentiment for the young student going to NYU, the intern at a museum/art gallery, or the actor waiting tables while auditioning and

> I'm inclined to share the sentiment for the young student going to NYU, the intern at a museum/art gallery, or the actor waiting tables while auditioning and doing off broadway. They made a choice, and clearly think the city can offer them enough to deal with poverty and desperation. Perhaps I missed these personas in the original article, but these are very charitable examples of "poverty and desperation". Most people interning at museums and art galleries (in my experience) come from families who can at least afford to subsidize the cost of living in NYC. Waiting tables while auditioning and doing off broadway is actually a pretty decent way to earn a living - I had/have friends who have been doing that for 15-20 years and earn solid incomes, in some cases enough to raise a family. I went to nyu, and while it was a while ago, I'm told that if anything, NYU students are more privileged than they were when I went there. The real examples of poverty and desperation are the immigrants who are effectively forced to work in sweatshop conditions, or the women who pick up hours here and there in childcare in their neighborhood, or the security guards who live out of their cars or in homeless shelters because they don't get paid enough to end up in a stable living environment. In some cases, they don't have a network outside of NYC they could lean on, or don't have the resources to get to another city, or are (justifiably) scared of what would happen when they got there.