Hong Kong imposes an 18% flat tax on its citizens. New York City could never get away with that, since its citizens already pay about half their incomes to the feds. Instead New York runs on a 3% tax, and I don't think the services they get from the feds make up for lost value.
If New York city got 15% more of its citizens income, hell yeah it could build a magnetic anti-gravity bullet train run off of angel farts. But it has its share to pay of pork projects in Alaska and troop presence in 170 countries.
Perhaps NY could spend that extra 15% effectively. But it would probably just be wasted.
(1) If patrons dance or sway to music in a bar without a cabaret license, the police will ticket the bar owner. As of 3 weeks ago, the cops were actively patrolling for this.
I don't disagree that America needa a new approach. I just think Friedman chose an easily sniped-at rhetorical device to make that point.
I find your point here to be disingenuous. Because NYC has more people it is not comparable to other large cities in Asia? Because NYC serves citizens through democratic multi-tiered governments that this does not exist in Asia as well? Look at major metropolises like Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, and the awesome number of huge cities in India. All are served by democratically elected governments. If one were to take your post as gospel you'd think the entirety of Asia was one gigantic totalitarian wasteland!
I think Friedman is onto something - as a Chinese-Canadian I've seen both sides of the fence, and it absolutely terrifies me that we are facing the very real possibility of an oppressive dictatorship becoming the new world superpower, and all because we were too busy screwing selling ourselves out.
Some would say that if China is becoming a world superpower, it's because they're behaving less like an oppressive dictatorship. In world-historic timescales, China's transformation is ludicrously fast; it seems strange to demand even more radical political change as evidence of their bona fides.
Asserting that Hong Kong is a city on par with New York or London is going against years of perception to the opposite, mostly driven by the higher wages for the financial class in Western financial centers. That said, unless someone speaks mandarin these days, they are not likely to find the sorts of opportunities that previously existed in Hong Kong. One of the great things about the island is that it's always been a working city, and it is reorienting to mainland markets quickly.
Plus Hong Kong didn't always use to be a part of China, so it is a fair comparison.
While people in china might live in poverty and suffer of malnutrition, in here people are suffering form junk food. Fat and obese, compromise more 70% of the population in the states, and fresh healthy food is too expensive.