A New Batman for ‘Gotham City’

On Jan. 1, 2014, newly elected Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio officially took office. It may seem that this event only affects America. In reality, the future decisions of the self-proclaimed progressive mayor influence events on a global scale.

The first Democratic mayor of New York for the past 20 years came to power under the slogan “Fight inequality” in the city where the financial sector provides a significant portion of the revenue — nearly a quarter of the gross domestic product of New York. America’s largest financial center, as we all know, is suffering from severe social inequality. The number of those who can refer to themselves as middle class in this city has dropped dramatically over the past two decades.

Along with Los Angeles, New York tops the list of the cities that have lost the largest number of residents because of their moving to areas more “fit for life” in the United States. From 2000 to 2009, these cities have lost a total of 3 million “runaway” people.

Some of the reasons for the disappearance of the middle class in New York had to do with the transfer of production outside the city and the fact that it was becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to survive in the city, with preferential treatment given to the financial, fashion and tourism industries. However, over time, these industries failed to become new growth points for the city’s economy.

That is why de Blasio’s pre-election campaign rhetoric about “two cities” within New York — one thriving and the other mired in poverty — fell on fertile ground and brought him the favor of voters. At the same time, with de Blasio’s nomination, the U.S. Democratic Party made the first successful step in the search for a worthy successor to “social reformer” Barack Obama, who rapidly lost his popularity in 2013.

By the night of Dec. 31, 2013, the elected mayor moved forward almost without a team: Out of nearly 50 city leaders, only four names were announced. An hour before the new year, the names of five more leaders were declared. After a week in office, the mayor succeeded in filling almost all vacant top administration positions, but this “slowness” led his critics to doubt his ability to lead the city.

His opponents are well-aware of the importance of the newly elected New York mayor. Right away, de Blasio was charged with making unfulfilled promises of “energetic and urgent changes” in order to show his similarity to Barack Obama. The mere fact of such criticism only underscores how much attention is now fixed on New York in anticipation of revolutionary changes.

Two main priorities of the newly appointed New York mayor are two large-scale social programs: the creation of affordable housing and the introduction of a universal preschool education program. This program is designed to help prepare children for school, as well as assist working mothers. The shortage and high cost of kindergartens is not a uniquely Russian problem, along with the high cost of housing — both in the rental and sales markets.

In New York, de Blasio intends to create 200,000 units of affordable housing through the compulsory construction of a certain percentage of municipal facilities, along with the construction of new commercial residential complexes. The mayor also proposed to use $1 billion from the city’s pension funds to invest in construction and preserve affordable housing. De Blasio plans to get the preschool education funds by raising taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers. Redistribution of resources in favor of the needy is, of course, a political rather than economic move, as it was presented during his campaign.

How to fund the program for preschool education has become a [point of] major disagreement between New York Mayor de Blasio and his party colleague and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Unlike de Blasio, Cuomo believes that existing taxes are already too high and proposes a program that will reduce them by $2 billion over the next three years. The governor supported de Blasio’s decision to develop a preschool education program but did not make any comments on how to get the money for its practical implementation, if not through the raising of taxes.

De Blasio went even further in his social “progressivism.” He declared that, even if the funds for this program are taken from the state’s budget, taxes on the rich people would still need to be raised.

This is the statement that should be considered a key political event of the first week of “de Blasio’s era” in Gotham, as New Yorkers affectionately refer to the city. However, the tax increase is almost symbolic, as taxes for anyone who earns more than $500,000 will increase by $973 per year.

Obviously, de Blasio succeeded in attracting attention to the problem of inequality across America. The fight against poverty, minimum wages and unemployment benefits, as well as the continuation of the debate on health care reform will be central political issues in 2014. However, the simplification of such an honorable idea as fighting inequality in New York to a banal attempt at income redistribution from the rich to the poor can lead the “new Batman” — who lives not in the world of comics but, rather, in a modern America of fashionable right-wing populism — toward failure.

The left-wing populism that de Blasio so successfully presented during the election campaign exploits the same expectations of those Americans who once led Obama to power. The latter’s failure to build “a more fair state” seemed to have buried progressivism as a political category, but de Blasio, who, by the way, is close to the Clinton family, can breathe new life into the projects of the left-wing Democratic Party.

However, Mayor de Blasio, the “updated and improved” version of Obama who is building a “fair New York,” will only be successful if he creates real city programs that are not concentrated on income redistribution— which is surely not going to provide him the support of a majority of Americans — but are concentrated on the fight for equal opportunities. This idea is much closer and more understandable for Americans.