Headline: “More than half of NYers believe America’s best days in the past” (The Business Review, Sept. 10, 2008 referring to a Siena College poll.) If NYers are doubtful about the country, how do they feel about New York State? Are New York’s best days behind us? What will New York’s future look like?
Will New York be a state...
• With a diminishing middle class – leaving only the very rich and the very poor?
• Where college graduates continue move out of state to find good jobs?
• Where businesses only stay if they can get huge tax breaks?
• Where our public infrastructure (education, healthcare, public safety, transportation and public assistance) declines until we resemble a third-world nation?
One of our problems is that the current political decision-making process cuts off discussion. The three-men-in-a-room dynamic that is built into New York’s political infrastructure has produced too many short-term fixes for systemic problems. That must change. With new faces in that room, perhaps it will.
Yet, viable solutions need to be fed into that system and today there are too few places where people who have answers can interact with decision-makers and an interested public.
The Improving New York section of the Empire Page can be another. While we will continue to welcome guest editorials, the primary focus of this section will be interviews with people whose voices we feel deserve greater exposure – people who can explain how we got into trouble and how we can get out of it. Approximately once a week you'll have the opportunity to hear from someone whose ideas need to be heard.
How can you participate? You can comment on any of the pieces in this section (except the biographies attached to the interviewees). You can suggest the names of people we ought to interview, submit a guest editorial (submission rules) and let your friends and colleagues know when you find something here that makes sense.
Can New York be improved? Is there the will to do so? Stay tuned.