- Malanga, Steven.
The New New Left.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.
ISBN 1-56663-644-2.
-
This thin book (or long essay—the main text is less than 150 pages),
argues that urban politics in the United States has largely been
captured by an iron triangle of “tax eaters”: unionised public
employees, staff of government funded social and health services, and
elected officials drawn largely from the first two groups and put into
office by their power to raise campaign funds, get out the vote, and
direct involvement in campaigns due to raw self-interest: unlike
private sector voters, they are hiring their own bosses.
Unlike traditional big-city progressive politics or the New Left
of the 1960s, which were ideologically driven and motivated by
a genuine desire to improve the lot of the disadvantaged (even if
many of their policy prescriptions proved to be counterproductive
in practice), this “new new left” puts its own well-being squarely
at the top of the agenda: increasing salaries, defeating attempts
to privatise government services, expanding taxpayer-funded programs,
and forcing unionisation and regulation onto the private sector
through schemes such as “living wage” mandates.
The author fears that the steady growth in the political muscle of
public sector unions may be approaching or have reached a tipping
point—where, albeit not yet a numerical majority, through their
organised clout they have the power to elect politicians
beholden to them, however costly to the productive sector
or ultimately disastrous for their cities, whose taxpayers and
businesses may choose to vote with their feet for places where
they are viewed as valuable members of the community rather than
cash cows to be looted.
Chapter 5 dismantles Richard Florida's
crackpot “Creative Class” theory, which
argues that by taxing remaining workers and businesses even more heavily
and spending the proceeds on art, culture, “diversity”, bike
paths, and all the other stuff believed to attract the
golden children of the dot.com bubble, rust belt cities already
devastated by urban socialism can be reborn. Post dot.bomb,
such notions are more worthy of a belly laugh than thorough
refutation, but if it's counter-examples and statistics
you seek, they're here.
The last three chapters focus almost entirely on New York City.
I suppose this isn't surprising, both because New York is often at
the cutting edge in urban trends in the U.S., and also
because the author is a senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute
and a contributing editor to its
City Journal,
where most of this material originally appeared.
December 2005 