Sunset for New York - steps needed for New York to solve its social and economic problems - column

National Review, Oct 15, 1990 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

In casual conversation with Edward Koch I mentioned the young man from Utah who had been stabbed to death by a teenaged New Yorker. I have to tell you," said the former mayor of New York City, I cried when I read that story." Those who doubt that he did so do not know Edward Koch; and perhaps they don't know the gut anxiety being felt among New Yorkers. He also remarked that New York was looking desperately like another Chicago, another Detroit. "If it goes that way, that's it, the end of New York ... It's said about Dinkins'-his successor-'that he is sliding over the threshold."

What threshold?"

When they make fun of you. When you become the object of derision. It's very hard to climb back."

It is probably appropriate to remark that not absolutely everybody in the United States is all that unhappy that New York City should be the special victim of circumstances. New York is flagrantly arrogant. The best of everything, you name it. And when in 1975 New York came up against bankruptcy, the city was saved by the New York Daily News headline: FORD To CITY: DRop DEAD." The electric reaction was that New York City can no more be permitted to drop dead than the American flag to be burned. Very fine people, from every economic and social stratum, feel that way about the sacredness of New York City. What is happening now, however, comes close to despair:

Over the weekend, there was a celebration by members of the staff of Mayor John Lindsay (1966-74). One account of it recalled Murray Kempton's buoyant sentence about him when he ran for mayor. He is fresh, everyone else is tired." It is an unhappy truth that the Lindsay administration did nothing to arrest the deterioration of New York City. After eight years, everything-aucation, housing, health care, law and order-was worse than it had been before. And everything has continued to worsen. Over the weekend, the New York Times published an eloquent elegy about New York City by Anna Quindien. "There is the sinking feeling that accompanies that moment in a boat when you find water in your shoes..." And the note of final despair: This is so sad to me, and sad to me, too, is that not a single social scientist, not a single urban planner, certainly not any politician, seems to have any idea how to cure it."

Now those are fighting words, for a can-do society. Granted, conservatives reject the use of the word cure" applied to social problems, for the simple reason that social problems are never cured, they are merely alleviated. You do not cure" the crime problem, or that of illegitimacy, or of indigence.

But the idea that you cannot alleviate the mess in New York City is sheer liberal self-justification. It is the short form for saying: We cannot alleviate a problem while maintaining our old habits." And the answer to that observation is: No, you can't. Because your old habits caused the present mess."

Is it unconstitutional to:

1. Eliminate rent control? (In ten years that would all but clear away the problem of the homeless, and restore decent living quarters at a decent price.)

2. Eliminate trade-union oligopoly? (In

3r? ten years that would lower the cost of doing business in New York by enough to rejuvenate the economy of the city.)

3. Empower New York residents to select the school they want to send their child to? (In ten years that would arrest, and then reverse, the drop in educational-achievement scores.)

4. Privatize garbage collection, intracity mail service, and the subway system? (In ten years, you could mail a letter to someone entering the subway at 125th Street and the letter would be delivered when he got out at Brooklyn.)

5. Send away, after conviction for any crime of violence, beginning at age 16, the convict to a New York City penitentiary for five years? Institute the private Police Corps program proposed by Adam Walinsky and double the size of the police force? (In ten years, crime would be reduced by 75 per cent.)

6. Eliminate the capital-gains tax and the stock-transfer tax, reduce the sales tax by one-quarter, cut the income tax in half? (In one year, you would have the reinvigoration of commercial life.)

7. Forbid affirmative-action employment policies by city agencies, and double the penalty for racially discriminatory offenses? (In ten years, racial passions would cool. Nobody would have reason to hope for artificial help.)

8. Make a national holiday out of June 24, which is the day I declared my candidacy for mayor of New York in 1965?