We Can’t Fall Asleep on the American Dream

Income inequality is in the news. The Democrats blame the Republicans for it, and the Republicans blame the Democrats. There is a long article about it in this week’s New Yorker. What seems beyond dispute is that incomes are more polarized in this country than anywhere else in the First World.

As real estate agents in New York, our country’s most expensive city, we both enjoy the benefits and suffer the consequences of this growing disparity in earnings and net worth. On the one hand, most of our clients and customers, or their families, are among the fortunate few. In a marketplace in which the most desultory studio costs more than the average home price in the rest of the nation, there is some inevitability to this. On the other hand, the people on whom we count to make life in our beautiful city viable, the firemen and police, the sanitation and MTA workers, not to mention the staff members who keep our businesses moving forward, can rarely afford to live anywhere near the places they work. Nor can the artists and students who keep our cultural life on the cutting edge. And time makes these problems worse, not better, as partisan infighting obviates the possibility of a legislative solution.

Something must be done if we are not to turn into a dystopian environment in which gentrified New York increasingly resembles a giant gated community. Somehow over the past four decades the American Dream has changed. It is more and more difficult to rise out of poverty and into the (struggling) middle class. Somehow people at the top of the pyramid believe that they “deserve” it, a concept that would be laughable if it were not so prevalent. As one investment banker friend of mine put it, there are many in our midst who “mistake luck for genius.” But for our city to remain healthy, and to remain the center of the vibrant business, social, and artistic endeavors which make it a destination and drive the marketplace for real estate and other goods and services, we must open more doors for more people. But how to do it?

• We certainly need a higher minimum wage. Without the guarantee that full time work can lift you out of poverty, what do we have?

• We clearly need earlier intervention and improved education. And testing is not the solution for that. In the world of the Internet, facts are available to anyone. What schools need to teach is how to think and how to write. How to be entrepreneurial. How to speak and behave in a work environment. And that there are civic priorities greater than becoming rich.

• We need immigrants. We need their commitment to hard work and a better life, and we need the new blood, excitement, and fresh ideas they bring with them. Immigration built this country. It has always been our greatest asset.

• We need housing. Good housing for lower and middle income families. If building this housing requires tax incentives, then we need tax incentives. Because the only way to obtain this housing is for developers to build it. Without the development community on board with the process, there can be no housing initiative.

We have an extraordinary history of opportunity in New York. The desire felt by people from all walks of life all over the world to come to New York has built my business and thousands of others. We have always been a city of opportunity within the land of opportunity. Each of us, in the real estate business and every other business, has an obligation to our ancestors and to our children’s children to work however we can to keep the dream alive.