to be fair, he is comparing a financial capital, to another one. He didn't compare Hong Kong to West Virginia, Alabama... or other rural backwaters of this country.
Plus Hong Kong didn't always use to be a part of China, so it is a fair comparison.
While people in china might live in poverty and suffer of malnutrition, in here people are suffering form junk food. Fat and obese, compromise more 70% of the population in the states, and fresh healthy food is too expensive.
Alot of revenue is siphoned out of the urban, prosperous areas in the United States and sent to the rural backwaters. Flyover country receives more money from the feds than it pays in federal taxes, and the dense and rich regions face the opposite calculus.
Hong Kong imposes an 18% flat tax on its citizens. New York City could never get away with that, since its citizens already pay about half their incomes to the feds. Instead New York runs on a 3% tax, and I don't think the services they get from the feds make up for lost value.
If New York city got 15% more of its citizens income, hell yeah it could build a magnetic anti-gravity bullet train run off of angel farts. But it has its share to pay of pork projects in Alaska and troop presence in 170 countries.
New York also wastes ridiculous amounts of money on local pork. Housing lotteries (the city buys 50% of a house for a few lucky people), bloated salaries for MTA workers, dance police (1), and most programs are extremely inefficient (housing projects in manhattan? why not move them to Jamaica, and save money?).
Perhaps NY could spend that extra 15% effectively. But it would probably just be wasted.
(1) If patrons dance or sway to music in a bar without a cabaret license, the police will ticket the bar owner. As of 3 weeks ago, the cops were actively patrolling for this.
That's perhaps a little simplistic. New Yorker fund managers wouldn't be skimming their millions off mid-westerner's retirement accounts were it not for Washington.
It's fair to compare the showpiece financial crown jewel of Southeast Asia to the largest, most diverse metropolitan area in the US? Hong King has a population of 7MM. NY Metro has 19MM. And NY Metro has to serve all its citizens through democratic muni, state, and federal processes; neither Michael Bloomberg nor David Paterson can declare "wi-fi bullet trains for everybody!" and keep their office, at least not while there are schools to fund.
I don't disagree that America needa a new approach. I just think Friedman chose an easily sniped-at rhetorical device to make that point.
Then compare it with Beijing, Tokyo, and Shanghai. Hong Kong is not the only "crown jewel" city in Asia. And FYI, Beijing and HK are plenty diverse.
I find your point here to be disingenuous. Because NYC has more people it is not comparable to other large cities in Asia? Because NYC serves citizens through democratic multi-tiered governments that this does not exist in Asia as well? Look at major metropolises like Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, and the awesome number of huge cities in India. All are served by democratically elected governments. If one were to take your post as gospel you'd think the entirety of Asia was one gigantic totalitarian wasteland!
I think Friedman is onto something - as a Chinese-Canadian I've seen both sides of the fence, and it absolutely terrifies me that we are facing the very real possibility of an oppressive dictatorship becoming the new world superpower, and all because we were too busy screwing selling ourselves out.
You say we're "screwing selling ourselves out", but the only evidence that's been marshalled for that argument here is the bullet train with wi-fi --- wi-fi that was invented, perfected, designed, and engineered here, for what it's worth. Would you like to present some actual evidence to support your position?
Some would say that if China is becoming a world superpower, it's because they're behaving less like an oppressive dictatorship. In world-historic timescales, China's transformation is ludicrously fast; it seems strange to demand even more radical political change as evidence of their bona fides.
It is a fair comparison tptacek. For years the canonical sentiment about Hong Kong in Britain (where it is relatively easy to get permission to work on the island) has been that it is an economic backwater suitable only for those who cannot make it back home. There was even a derogatory acronym in common parlance to describe the people who went to work there: F.I.L.T.H. (Failed in London, Tried Hong Kong).
Asserting that Hong Kong is a city on par with New York or London is going against years of perception to the opposite, mostly driven by the higher wages for the financial class in Western financial centers. That said, unless someone speaks mandarin these days, they are not likely to find the sorts of opportunities that previously existed in Hong Kong. One of the great things about the island is that it's always been a working city, and it is reorienting to mainland markets quickly.
This is all really interesting stuff, trevelyan, but I don't see how it buttresses Friedman's argument that the Hong Kong bullet train is a metaphor for the decline of the west, or challenges my argument that the bullet train is a just an anecdote with very little explanatory power.
Plus Hong Kong didn't always use to be a part of China, so it is a fair comparison.
While people in china might live in poverty and suffer of malnutrition, in here people are suffering form junk food. Fat and obese, compromise more 70% of the population in the states, and fresh healthy food is too expensive.