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A comment on Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016). Parent comment

Re:Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York... by davidf18 on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @09:13AM (#13976249)
The first part of the 2nd Ave subway line to 96th St in NYC was completed a couple of months ago. The cost of the extension was prohibitively expensive because of unions. Europe is able to build subways with much less cost per mile than NYC.
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Re:Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York... by CPLX on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @09:18AM (#13976291)
> The cost of the extension was prohibitively expensive because of unions. Europe is able to build subways with much less cost per mile than NYC

You mean the same Europe that has incredibly powerful public sector unions?

Maybe a thing they don't have is a political system run by a group of mindless plutocratic politicians that shout "free markets" as the solution to social problems while practicing crony capitalism. They also don't have the Cuomo family.

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Re:Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York... by eru on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @09:41AM (#13976451)
Yes, the same Europe. I don't know about the French, but the unions in Germany and Scandinavia are quite a bit more pro-business than their American counterparts.

Hong Kong and Singapore build infrastructure for quite cheap. And there they don't need to shout about `free markets': the government mostly allows them already.

I'm totally with you on the crony-capitalism bashing.

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Re:Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York... by sangnoir on Tuesday March 28, 2017 @04:09PM (#13980188)
> Yes, the same Europe. I don't know about the French, but the unions in Germany and Scandinavia are quite a bit more pro-business than their American counterparts.

Why wouldn't German unions be pro-business when labor is represented at board level with full voting rights? German corporations do not consider themselves "job creators" or see workers as resources to be exploited, unlike their American counterparts.

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Re:Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York... by eru on Friday March 31, 2017 @05:47PM (#14008609)
It's a bit more complicated than that.
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