New York City, one of the longest standing bastions of liberalism in the United States, also contains the greatest disparity in wealth and income in the nation, according to a census report in the New York Times.
Of course, the sample is compromised in part because reports are harder to collect in more rural regions.
Yet what does income disparity really tell us? How does one define wealth? Like many reports on income differentials, the New York Times study fails to calculate the number or even the percentage of individuals who move from one income bracket to the next.
Rather than spinning such specious evidence to stir up more heated and halting class warfare, individuals in the United States must recognize that wealth fluctuates, people's standing as rich, middle class, and even poor or working class depends on a number of features, not just the average amount of annual income.
Besides, New York City, one of the most regulated and statist cities in the country, must evaluate the lasting legacy of government encroachment in the private sector and the explosion of public sector employment, including exorbitant pensions and benefits for state workers, all of which contribute to a strained economy pressed into sluggish growth and rising unemployment across the state.