March 28, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Charles Dodgson blasts Bloomberg for
Charles Dodgson blasts Bloomberg for admitting that the poor get incinerators in their neighborhoods, while the rich don't.
"The fact of the matter is that where you tend to site things - unfortunately - it tends to be in areas that are also in proximity to people who are just starting their ways up the economic ladder," he said.People, that is, who aren't as far up the economic ladder as Kira Kerkorian, who at the age of four, could have had $50,000 a month, or $600,000 a year, in child support (the figure in Lisa's divorce settlement, which she could have had for the asking). Which, like the incincerator, is once again a useful gut check on the glories of American egalitarianism.
Well. . . like most things that sound dreadful, it's more complicated that it appears.
First of all, at least in New York, a lot of the incinerators and power plants and other facilities that enrage the activist groups were there before the poor people. The poor people are there because the power plants drive land values low enough so that they can afford to live there.
Second of all, New York is facing a $4.8 billion budget deficit. Siting an incinerator on Park Avenue, would, as Bloomberg says in the article Dodgson cites, drain the city coffers of money that's used to provide services to those aforementioned poor people.
Posted by Jane Galt at March 28, 2002 8:44 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links