EDITOR: We published the below two weeks ago. We thought it was one of our most meaningful articles. It was not widely read. Perhaps it was the former title. Perhaps because the early paragraphs suggests a travelogue. Let’s try again.
By Robert Field
Near the end of our month long journey, we stood on the top deck of our cruise ship marveling at the skyscrapers that surround Hong Kong’s harbor. Bold buildings of creative shapes and forms represent current technology and creativity.
Trio Building in Singapore
Our journey to witness the Asian miracle started in the city state of Singapore, a region that within our middle-age guide’s lifetime had transformed itself from huts without electricity to one of the great cities and economic centers of the world. We marveled at modern structures, highways and the subway system, all the results of good planning, government and private investment, public thrift, strong work ethics, and astute civic and business leadership. (Yes, its government in ways is repressive, but democracy is deeply rooted.)
In both cities, the combined subway / light rail systems served the entire region. The stations were modern, clean, the signage was excellent, the prices reasonable, and pedestrians were safeguarded by glass walls between platforms and tracks.
In Hong Kong, we strolled through enclosed walkways two stories above the streets that stretch as long as a mile, providing safe access to office buildings, malls and neighborhoods.
Private cars were relatively rare, heavily taxed, and, at least in Singapore, rationed. Traffic moved at high speeds along modern highways even during rush hours.
In both Singapore and Hong Kong, there was no misguided austerity, which impoverishes rather than enriches a nation. (Consider the silliness of equating government budgets with those of families, a notion that any alert first year student of economics could refute.) Governments saw what was needed now and especially for the future and got on with it, as did our New Deal in the mid 1930s and the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. Growth and prosperity followed.
Just fifteen hours from departure for home, the drive from JFK Airport to Manhattan served as a jolting reminder of how far our infrastructure has been allowed decay. Traffic was backed up on the expressway, even at 11:00 PM. We encountered narrow highways, construction repairs underway every mile or two, potholes everywhere, often the white lines dividing lanes had faded away.
The same was also true of the avenues in Manhattan.
As a nation, we had an opportunity to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps in 2008. With the economy in shambles, mass unemployment and disinclination of business to invest and banks to lend, a wise president supported by almost every reputable economist, decades of experience, and the teachings of John Meynard Keynes, called for massive expenditures for infrastructure development to put people back to work and to enable the country to leap forward.
We could have modernized our airports, introduced high speed railways, repaired our highways and upgraded and expanded our subways. We could have invested in modern technology and expanded access so that every youngster had access to the Internet. We could have modernized the electric grid.
Instead we did very little other than further enrich the wealthy by a monetary policy that mainly drove up the stock market. For at least seven years we suffered high unemployment and underemployment. We paid people who desired work to stay home.
Sky walk in Hong Kong
Lancaster is no exception to the lost opportunities of our times, made worse by an inept and misguided city leadership.
Over half a century ago when we first arrived in Lancaster, the public’s business was conducted with transparency. The Steinman newspapers and TV station were devoted to the public good, both in reporting and through philanthropy. Business investment was encouraged and, when perceived to have merit, funded by the banks. Business thrived and investors, not the public, assumed the risks.
Let’s compare what has recently been happening in our own Lancaster to the keptocracy (government by thieves) that has seized Russia and many other nations.
By controlling the media, Vladimir Putin has been able to fool his population that government is serving their needs and to blame all problems on the USA. In actuality, he and the oligarchs have been syphoning off most of the nation’s and private sector’s wealth and investing it out of the country over the past twenty-five years.
Putin and his gang of thugs practice social capitalism: Risk is borne by the general public and profits flow to the very few.
On a small scale, is this not what has been happening in Lancaster?
The Watt & Shand complex was initially intended to be an upscale residential condominium in response to the nationwide demographic trend of young adults and seniors back to urban centers.
But developing condominiums would have meant the developer bear risk. Instead we ended up with the Marriott Hotel, almost entirely at public expense, and an insolvent convention center, now being further publicly subsidized, and with its revenues syphoned off through one sided, scandalous contracts benefiting Penn Square Partners, the equitable owners of the adjoining Marriott Hotel. Adding insult to injury, the Marriott is exempt from paying real estate taxes.
Making things even worse, instead of condominiums facilitating a spread of residential gentrification to the south of King Street, the convention center creates a lifeless Queen Street block, impeding residential development to the south.
The community having been half bled, now blood suckers are back for more. With the connivance of city government, Senator Lloyd Smucker’s CRIZ program (City Revitalization and Improvement Zone) diverts future public tax revenue into the pockets of current private interests. It amounts to stealing from our children.
Vladimir Putin would feel right at home.
The sense of fair play through mutual sacrifice generated by and following the Second World War has been replaced by the triumph of self interest. The media, with a few exceptions, serves up only feel good news and manipulates pubic opinion to benefit its publishers and their clique. The greedy misdirect and exploit the gullible.
The latest: Our billion dollar asset, Lancaster General Hospital, is about to become part of the University of Pennsylvania Health Care System. The public is told that we will receive the details after the arrangements have been completed. Even the inner circle at Lancaster General are only “apprised” about what is going on. Are we children?
We have a leader in Barack Obama who tried mightily to turn things around. But in large part he was thwarted by special interests and the ignorant.
Over the next few decades, Asian countries will take over world leadership. Asians may invest here and continue to lend us money, but it is unlikely that they will save us from ourselves.
Our decline is well documented, well observed by everyone except ourselves. We defeated the Soviet Union only to become them.