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Can someone explain why we do not see the "us vs. them " in NY/NJ/CT. I used to live in LI , where a lot successful Wall Street Bankers lived and never once d

Can someone explain why we do not see the "us vs. them " in NY/NJ/CT. I used to live in LI , where a lot successful Wall Street Bankers lived and never once did I hear about this kind of resentment. I am just puzzled .

rkuykendall-com 13y ago
> why we do not see the "us vs. them " in NY... You must not be watching NYC politics. Watch all of yesterday's episode of The Daily Show [1] with Mayor DeBlasio. Don't worry, you won't need to read into any subtext, it's the whole focus of the episode. [1] Free online: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-3-2014-bill-de-blasio http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-3-201...
Johnie 13y ago
I lived in NYC for 12 years prior to moving to Silicon Valley and spent 8 of those years in the finance industry. NYC government created a symbiotic relationship with the finance industry. NYC used the tax revenue from the high income earners to build up local infrastructure and make the city a better place. In the 12 years that I was there and the many more that I've been there in the region, the city had improved drastically. This was to the betterment of everyone. Part of what made NYC great was its transportation infrastructure. It moved millions of people around the city at all times of the day. There was no class structure in the Subways; the 1% rode the subways alongside the service workers. People got a sense that everyone benefited from the increase in income and tax revenue. This was dramatically different on the west coast. In the Bay Area, the local government create policies (limiting housing specifically) that don't benefit the long term future of the region. Compared to NYC, SF governance is pretty dysfunctional. When I first moved out here, I was shocked by how lacking the transportation infrastructure was. I always had the vision that Silicon Valley and SF was high tech and that the public transportation infrastructure must be better than NYC. This was not the case. This lead to the high income earners to create a separate transportation system that benefit them (Uber, corporate shuttles, etc). This leads to a lot of friction between the haves and have not.
- gms 13y ago
  In other words, the woes in Silicon Valley are due to local government mismanagement than anything else.
- rayiner 13y ago
  You hit the nail on the head about transit, because the Bay Area's poor transit system exacerbates the problem creating by gentrification and rising rents. I used to work in Midtown, and commute in from New Rochelle, a city that's mostly working class hispanics with a few yuppie high rises near the train station. The ~18 mile trip used to take just over 35 minutes on Metro North, and the service was highly reliable as well as highly available (8 trains to GCT between 7:02 am and 8:47 am). One stop closer to Manhattan was Pehlam, an upper middle class white area. The next stop after that was Mt. Vernon, a working class black area. There were two other lines through Westchester, each stopping in dozens of towns and with similar service. In sum, it was very practical to work in Manhattan but live in a town where rent wasn't totally unaffordable for people outside the upper middle class. There is nothing comparable in the Bay Area. Rising rents don't just mean moving a slightly longer walk away from the train, or down another stop, but possibly moving somewhere else entirely.
cylinder 13y ago
Because the tristate area has far better infrastructure and housing options that includes low-income areas. There is a housing option for almost any income bracket that includes accessible public transit with reasonable commutes to the city, and thus, employment.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
There is an "us versus them" mentality in NY/NJ/CT, but there are a few countervailing factors: 1) Liberals on the east coast are more pragmatic/less idealistic than those on the west coast. 2) NY/NJ/CT has had a long time to get used to the negatives of having the banking industry there, and has had a long time to figure out and leverage the positives. 3) In NY/NJ/CT, there is more reliance across classes on shared infrastructure. Those bankers in Long Island take LIRR to work, and pay into a system everyone uses. 4) People who work on Wall Street embrace that they're just in it for the money and are doing "business as usual." Silicon Valley does "business as usual" but puts on this air of "saving the world!" That hypocrisy rubs people the wrong way. 5) I think there is more shared culture in NY/NJ/CT, at least among certain key groups. Remember, this foment about "haves versus have nots" isn't raised by the poor people themselves. It's raised by an intellectual elite. I think there's a much bigger cultural gap between the crunchy hippies at Berkeley that write these sorts of articles and the engineers in Silicon Valley, then there is between the crunchy hippies at Columbia and the bankers on Wall Street.
- harryh 13y ago
  Can you expand on #5? I think you might be right but it's not something I've thought about before.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    My point is that narratives about the friction that exists in a society are created by the intelligentsia. For example, Mr. Vindu Goel, author of this article, is a Harvard graduate. So it's important to look at the culture of the intelligentsia in a community (those who are educated there or choose to settle there), relative to the culture of the "haves." New York has groups of people leading the charge on behalf of the "have nots." But if you look at the background of someone in that camp, you'll often see say a Columbia or NYU grad who has family who works in finance or one of its ancillary industries. A lot of the journalists who might cover the issue of "Wall Street versus Main Street" come from privileged backgrounds themselves and eat at the same restaurants and go to the same nightclubs as people who work on Wall Street. In the Bay Area, I think you see more of a disconnect. I think a stereotypical member of the opposition might have a background like my wife's uncle: mom was a professor at Berkeley and grow up in town. That person doesn't have a lot in common with a Google engineer who moved into the city from the east coast and takes a shuttle bus into the suburbs every day for work.

rkuykendall-com 13y ago

> why we do not see the "us vs. them " in NY... You must not be watching NYC politics. Watch all of yesterday's episode of The Daily Show [1] with Mayor DeBlasio. Don't worry, you won't need to read into any subtext, it's the whole focus of the episode. [1] Free online: http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-3-2014-bill-de-blasio http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/mon-february-3-201...

Johnie 13y ago

I lived in NYC for 12 years prior to moving to Silicon Valley and spent 8 of those years in the finance industry. NYC government created a symbiotic relationship with the finance industry. NYC used the tax revenue from the high income earners to build up local infrastructure and make the city a better place. In the 12 years that I was there and the many more that I've been there in the region, the city had improved drastically. This was to the betterment of everyone. Part of what made NYC great was its transportation infrastructure. It moved millions of people around the city at all times of the day. There was no class structure in the Subways; the 1% rode the subways alongside the service workers. People got a sense that everyone benefited from the increase in income and tax revenue. This was dramatically different on the west coast. In the Bay Area, the local government create policies (limiting housing specifically) that don't benefit the long term future of the region. Compared to NYC, SF governance is pretty dysfunctional. When I first moved out here, I was shocked by how lacking the transportation infrastructure was. I always had the vision that Silicon Valley and SF was high tech and that the public transportation infrastructure must be better than NYC. This was not the case. This lead to the high income earners to create a separate transportation system that benefit them (Uber, corporate shuttles, etc). This leads to a lot of friction between the haves and have not.

gms 13y ago
In other words, the woes in Silicon Valley are due to local government mismanagement than anything else.
rayiner 13y ago
You hit the nail on the head about transit, because the Bay Area's poor transit system exacerbates the problem creating by gentrification and rising rents. I used to work in Midtown, and commute in from New Rochelle, a city that's mostly working class hispanics with a few yuppie high rises near the train station. The ~18 mile trip used to take just over 35 minutes on Metro North, and the service was highly reliable as well as highly available (8 trains to GCT between 7:02 am and 8:47 am). One stop closer to Manhattan was Pehlam, an upper middle class white area. The next stop after that was Mt. Vernon, a working class black area. There were two other lines through Westchester, each stopping in dozens of towns and with similar service. In sum, it was very practical to work in Manhattan but live in a town where rent wasn't totally unaffordable for people outside the upper middle class. There is nothing comparable in the Bay Area. Rising rents don't just mean moving a slightly longer walk away from the train, or down another stop, but possibly moving somewhere else entirely.

cylinder 13y ago

Because the tristate area has far better infrastructure and housing options that includes low-income areas. There is a housing option for almost any income bracket that includes accessible public transit with reasonable commutes to the city, and thus, employment.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 13y ago

There is an "us versus them" mentality in NY/NJ/CT, but there are a few countervailing factors: 1) Liberals on the east coast are more pragmatic/less idealistic than those on the west coast. 2) NY/NJ/CT has had a long time to get used to the negatives of having the banking industry there, and has had a long time to figure out and leverage the positives. 3) In NY/NJ/CT, there is more reliance across classes on shared infrastructure. Those bankers in Long Island take LIRR to work, and pay into a system everyone uses. 4) People who work on Wall Street embrace that they're just in it for the money and are doing "business as usual." Silicon Valley does "business as usual" but puts on this air of "saving the world!" That hypocrisy rubs people the wrong way. 5) I think there is more shared culture in NY/NJ/CT, at least among certain key groups. Remember, this foment about "haves versus have nots" isn't raised by the poor people themselves. It's raised by an intellectual elite. I think there's a much bigger cultural gap between the crunchy hippies at Berkeley that write these sorts of articles and the engineers in Silicon Valley, then there is between the crunchy hippies at Columbia and the bankers on Wall Street.

harryh 13y ago
Can you expand on #5? I think you might be right but it's not something I've thought about before.
- rayiner 13y ago
  My point is that narratives about the friction that exists in a society are created by the intelligentsia. For example, Mr. Vindu Goel, author of this article, is a Harvard graduate. So it's important to look at the culture of the intelligentsia in a community (those who are educated there or choose to settle there), relative to the culture of the "haves." New York has groups of people leading the charge on behalf of the "have nots." But if you look at the background of someone in that camp, you'll often see say a Columbia or NYU grad who has family who works in finance or one of its ancillary industries. A lot of the journalists who might cover the issue of "Wall Street versus Main Street" come from privileged backgrounds themselves and eat at the same restaurants and go to the same nightclubs as people who work on Wall Street. In the Bay Area, I think you see more of a disconnect. I think a stereotypical member of the opposition might have a background like my wife's uncle: mom was a professor at Berkeley and grow up in town. That person doesn't have a lot in common with a Google engineer who moved into the city from the east coast and takes a shuttle bus into the suburbs every day for work.