Quote:
Originally Posted by ThePhun1
What if New York never recovered under Giuliani? What if it had parralled Detroit's swoon?
Would LA or Chicago have taken over as the "It" city? Would the city suck but the suburbs be great? Or would the whole region decline? What would NYC be like today?
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If NYC "never recovered" the middle class could still afford to live there. I was in NYC in the mid to late 1970s and apartments and houses were actually affordable in many sections. Archie and Edith Bunker lived pretty well on a blue collar salary in Queens, and Edith didn't have to work. The mid '70s NYC of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver was gritty and crime ridden, but highly affordable even for a loser like Travis. And then the 1980s came along and things changed. The same thing happened in L.A. and S.F. as real estate prices outpaced wages. My parents bought a pretty nice house in the San Fernando Valley for $25,000 in 1971 (about their combined annual wages--both worked). Today that same house sells for almost $1 million, about 15 or 20 times an average family income. If we have a big deflation in real estate prices, it would be welcomed by potential buyers. Those who snapped up houses in Las Vegas after the 2008 real estate crash have made big bucks.