Have you ever left a city wanting your money back? (sale, house)
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Why do you keep going back then? I guess it's attractions are enough to endure the unpleasantness time after time?
I keep getting hoodwinked into it one way or the other with other groups of people. My gosh, I've been to the salt mines in Salzburg at least three times!
So everyone in Austria is rude to you? I don't know what to tell you, most of the people I met ther seemed fairly nice. Maybe they don't like Texans, that's understandable
Well, I haven't met "everyone in Austria." I'm sure there are some nice people there. I'm sure I passed many of them in the street in fact.
But it's quite striking that every time I go there, I run into some of the most rude people to walk this earth. Since this doesn't happen to me on a regular basis in any other corner of this earth, I do believe it has a bit more to do with them than it does with me.
But I don't really care one way or the other - I mainly just think it's weird in an entertaining sort of way.
Last edited by KathrynAragon; 12-31-2013 at 10:33 PM..
Well sure there are some interesting built form elements in NYC and Chicago in terms of neo-classical skyscraper architecture that can never be undone - i'm just talking about the vibe, energy and incredible new development of these emerging and already huge cities... I just can only imagine how they're going to be in a Hundred years - probably buzzing 50 million plus metro's.... Shanghai will probably be like Coruscant!
Yeah they have the vibe and energy, but anyone can build a sea of glassy new buildings. It's something immaterial, something about NYC that makes it totally unique.
I should have specified that, by "old world", I was referring to traditional centers of power in both Europe and the USA where the old money institutions of the world are aggregated. You also seem to have an interesting vernacular in which the terms "character" and "unique" are confined to the subset of "stuff you like". What makes you so confident that, in a globalized environment like this, burgeoning major cities in the far east would never have the same dynamism and unique flavors as the cultural hubs of the west? Wouldn't you say your view is a little myopic?
It's just subjective. NY's sheer seminality, being the 'unofficial centre of the world', each corner of it having personal significance...if I went to Chicago or Philly it might seem less unique, but I've been to many Asian cities and they're all special, but NY remains no. 1 to me.
I keep getting hoodwinked into it one way or the other with other groups of people. My gosh, I've been to the salt mines in Salzburg at least three times!
Lol, yeah I don't think I'd visit any country 6 times, too many countries in the world to see, especially if the people treated me that poorly. Wonder what it is about Austrians, any idea?
Eh, I find 20th century history and culture MORE interesting than a lot of Medieval or ancient history. I'm more interested in California in the 1960s than Europe in the 1500s. I certainly know which I'd live in. Maybe because it's living history, and it has more impact on our lives today. SoCal is a state of mind, it is a dream factory, a place of great wealth and poverty (not just material) where dreams and made and shattered, where joy and misery coexist.
You've never been to the US. Spend some time in NY and LA and you'll find they are their own little universes.
I've been to the UK and I loved the history; likewise, I'm back in Mass now before I head to China, and we live about a mile and a half from Old North Bridge, which was the second battle in he war of American Independence. In my teens, when we lived in Cambridge, I lived a block up from a house that George Washington stayed in as he planned a battle. There were historical sites like this everywhere.
It's cool having that stuff around, for sure, but truth be told, the main thing we used Minuteman National Park for was to get loaded and make out with our girlfriends; I walked past that home of Washington's drunk and with a pocketfull of weed while listening to the Deftones on my headphones more times than I could count. History happens, and then life goes on as it does in its wake, set on its path by those events.
The spirit of the American Revolution is alive in history books and the pride of the American people, but the entire area around the battle site is now an affluent community where people drive Mercedes SUV's and basically live like the poncey, pheasant-hunting English aristocrats that their ancestors came here to get away from.
If you're interested in a good primer on the grit of LA's "golden years" in the 30's, LA Confidential is a great read. Also, the books by John Fante are awesome - set in the LA of the prewar depression, they're masterpieces of LA literature that create this amazing atmosphere of smokey, streamlined and chromed 30's coffee shops, hopeless infatuations with loose and mysterious Chicanas, the pull of the California dream from a by-the-week studio apartment... "Ask The Dust" is a good one, though "The Road To Los Angeles" was the first in the series.
There is a great sentiment in Canada that our best days are ahead.. I think both Australia and Canada came out of the GFC swimmingly and both have bright futures - but neither has the population to be an economic superpower like China, brazil, India or Russia... These are probably the countries that are going to eat away at the U.S' economic dominance - its already happening.. It'll still be a powerful nation obviously but just not as much as it has been over the last 50 years. I see what your saying about NYC - but imagine how Shanghai, Mumbai, Sao Paulo or even Dubai are going to be like in One hundred years - they'll definitely have their own swag for sure!
In my opinion, part of Canada's brilliance and the key to its success in its future is its pragmatism and stability. Without getting into a huge primer on the historical reasons for these differences, the US is North America's risk taker, and that obsession with risk has given it the strongest military the world has ever seen and allowed it to dominate global influence via commerce, finance, and industry for the better part of the last century.
That embrace of risk - it's a bit of an obsession, really - has also primed it for a steady decline over the course of the next decade, and at this point, I think it's unavoidable. America's physical and social infrastructure is behind that of Australia, Canada, and much of the EU and developed Asia, and will take many billions if not trillions of dollars in the next few decades to catch up - money that is tied up in the corrupt and wedded cronyism of America's politics and commerce.
The millennials who will take the reigns of America's direction over the next couple decades are increasingly less duped, on the whole, by the promise that unfettered and unregulated free enterprise will make everyone prosper, due in large part to the fact that they have walked into a more desolate and hopeless working world than they were led to believe they'd had. The ones who went to school are crippled with debt that they can't pay down. There is currently more or less no hope for the vast bulk of millennials to retire - social security will be unable to keep them afloat as retirees as it currently stands, and companies have almost uniformly done away with pensions - which, admittedly, are crippling in a free market that doesn't hold corporations accountable as part of the nation that they operate in. I believe that ultimately, this will lead to huge changes in the way that America's public social structure and the expectations of corporations and the wealthy will function in the coming years... because as of now, it's a broken system. The political situation in the US is quite dire, with an element that more or less embraces the stupidity and slash-and-burn economics that only erode its power as something divinely patriotic.
During the last quarter century, as the US has spent its focus on making as much money as possible now, the future be damned, Canada has basically said, "well, we need money... but, to make money, we need to be sure that people are healthy and know how to read, so that they can work." Canada isn't perfect, but again, it's pragmatic, and it's done a much better job positioning itself so that it's poised to reap the benefits of the next century with a hopeful and empowered population.
Here in the 'States, we have a lot of cleaning up to do before we can be confident about our future.
The US will certainly stay influential and will be a major player on the world stage for the rest of our lifetimes and likely much longer... and, for all we know, it could indeed bounce back stronger and more stable than ever before, though I don't see this happening for some time.
Truth be told, no, I'm not particularly happy about this, but at the same time, this is the reality that my country has made for itself. I mean, who doesn't want to live in the most powerful and influential country on earth? But the sad fact is that the US' meteoric rise over the last century was ultimately co-opted and the middle class that built it was left out. Canada and Australia understand that the middle class is the key to their success, and that's where they're hedging their bets. China will continue to rise in stature, as will India, though both have huge issues at home that they will have to overcome if they want to truly be stable in their stature.
Regardless of how one perceives NYC today, I think it is inevitably destined to decline as the economic power of the USA wanes in the decades ahead. I personally feel this is already taking place for various reasons, such as audit data on foreign investment projects. The east is now on the rise, and I won't be surprised if far eastern hubs will start to dwarf western cities in importance in the first half of this century. I did refer to London as a "curiosity" earlier and that claim also applies in this scenario too. It is the odd man out in a declining west due to its timezone advantages, an economic and information 'bridge' between west and east, old world and new world, which is why we see it rising again.
Well, keep in mind that at this point, much of Asia's wealth is a result of the West relying on it as its low-cost manufacturing floor. Though China's middle class has exploded, it is still far from large enough to float its own manufacturing sector and is some distance from this point; also, Japan is poised for a very rocky few decades, and is facing its own looming crises when it comes to its middle class and the prospect of its economic future. NYC is the #1 financial hub in the world, and it will remain to be such for some time, much in the same way that London has remained one of the world's most influential financial cities.
It also must be put into perspective exactly what the US' "decline" will be. Now, were the US to suffer a crushing depression that lasted, say, a decade or more, then yes: there would certainly be a palpable decline in NYC as well. However, I think that a depression on the scale of, say, post-Communist Russia is unlikely for a variety of factors, and consequently, NYC - as well as other parts of the US (Houston with its influence on global energy, the Bay Area for its tech) - will continue to maintain a large degree of its status.
NYC is already part of an elite club of international cities that include London, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, etc. as places that due to their own pet industries and their long-standing, culturally-ingrained international business and political connections will manage to be insulated to some degree from many of the forces that that may batter the nations that they are in. "Rich mens' playgrounds," if you will.
Well, keep in mind that at this point, much of Asia's wealth is a result of the West relying on it as its low-cost manufacturing floor. Though China's middle class has exploded, it is still far from large enough to float its own manufacturing sector and is some distance from this point; also, Japan is poised for a very rocky few decades, and is facing its own looming crises when it comes to its middle class and the prospect of its economic future. NYC is the #1 financial hub in the world, and it will remain to be such for some time, much in the same way that London has remained one of the world's most influential financial cities.
It also must be put into perspective exactly what the US' "decline" will be. Now, were the US to suffer a crushing depression that lasted, say, a decade or more, then yes: there would certainly be a palpable decline in NYC as well. However, I think that a depression on the scale of, say, post-Communist Russia is unlikely for a variety of factors, and consequently, NYC - as well as other parts of the US (Houston with its influence on global energy, the Bay Area for its tech) - will continue to maintain a large degree of its status.
NYC is already part of an elite club of international cities that include London, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, etc. as places that due to their own pet industries and their long-standing, culturally-ingrained international business and political connections will manage to be insulated to some degree from many of the forces that that may batter the nations that they are in. "Rich mens' playgrounds," if you will.
I think the USA is already in a de facto depression masked by media complicity and a financially illiterate population, and that a much more visible hard landing is inevitable at some point in the future due to reckless credit expansion. Do we really think that the rally in the S&P only accidentally correlates to a similar trend showing a quadrupling of the FR balance sheet? London also superceded NYC as the premier global financial center quite some time ago. It's the center of the world now for forex, commodities, interest rate derivatives all of which see massive flows of international money on a daily basis. Again this is principally due to the timezone advantage of London relative to the working days of other financial centers in the world. There's not much NYC can do about that.
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