Pandemic in NYC : The Report: NYC

The Economics of a Pandemic in NYC

The impact COVID-19 presents one of the most serious recovery challenges New York City has ever experienced. It will require a system change as it will, without doubt, reveal a previously unknown range of malfunctions.

A practical example of how never doubt groups of strategic economists, civil rights activists, and social service leaders decide to tackle the following set of problems linked to the pandemic. The pandemic changed New York City’s world. Its impact is diving into the city faster than a Peregrine Falcon ripping into the entrails of a Central Park squirrel.

COVID-19’s blow to the economy led to abrupt job losses and business closures. The New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO) prepared a preliminary report on economic impact projections defined by job loss and tax revenue declines compared to previous estimates. Every urban person knows how serious this is going to become. But, on the oddly positive side of the issue, a super-power is revealed in the Pandemic – a national strike for health and justice could get health care and social justice because if a little bug can bring capital to its knees and get the government to put some in your pocket, that bug is telling you something about a national strike. Get prepared.

As the pandemic remains a moving target, the provision of this IBO readiness report could give the deep network of nonprofit community-based organizations time to prepare strategies responding to needs in their community. Read the details here: PDF HTML. See the summary and tables below.

The local economy will shed 475,000 jobs for over 12 months.
Large drops will be in personal income tax and sales tax.
Property tax will “lag” the next few years through 2022
Impacts on real estate values will occur in 2023 and beyond.
The U.S. economy in recession through 2020; GDP falls 4.5%.
The shortfall of $9.7 billion in tax revenue from major tax sources fiscal 2020 and 21.
The contraction will last through the first quarter of 2021, and job growth will be slow through to 2022.

New Yorkers will need a system change. Most major cities do, and it will not happen anywhere else before it is too late.

The information in the IBO report (summarized above) can stimulate a long list of questions following the critical thinking path outlined in Part Three will be highly useful.

For example:

How can small “never doubt” groups be encouraged to begin?
Where do they get to begin? Who do they work with in the government to establish a role?
How would they find each other, get started, and coordinate their activities?
Can they be organized in networks of expertise?
Is it possible to organize networks of a neighborhood, borough, and city-wide economists?
How about local social science workers conducting interviews?
Can they feed local data (testing, food, rent protection, transit, job access, IRS, SBA) to a city-wide source?
Help confirm the efficacy of aggregate stimulus payments.
Identify and implement innovative assistance services.

Here are just a few of the facts that stimulated restorative action questions above.