It only takes a 10-minute trip up New York’s No. 6 subway line to see the vast contradictions skewing the performance of the US on the UN’s human development index.
In the heart of the Upper East Side, 96th Street station is in the city’s 14th congressional district — the highest ranked in the nation, the index says. Townhouses with neatly tied curtains and ornate railings open on to streets abutting Central Park, only steps away from the city’s top museums and art galleries. Billionaire residents include the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, and the financier George Soros.
Average earnings here are US$116,000, unemployment is 5.4 percent, two-thirds of residents are white and six out of 10 people have a university education. Local delicatessens offer gourmet sandwiches and lattes. The streets are lined with independent bookstores and fashion boutiques and there is a preponderance of pet salons pandering to pampered pooches.
Five stops further up the line, 138th Street station is in the Bronx, among the 20 worst-performing districts in the US, with a score of 3.4 on the UN’s index — which corresponds to the national average around 1985.
A US flag hangs limply in the sun above a liquor store opposite Mitchel Houses, a sprawling project of local authority apartments with a collection of shipping containers in the car park.
“It’s no surprise, not to me it isn’t,” says Gilbert Washington, a maintenance worker, when told the US had fallen down the index.
He cites healthcare as an obstacle: “A lot of people don’t have assistance here even though they work — and the cost of medicine is skyrocketing.”
Raymond Petra, a building superintendent, agrees: “They want to send troops to other countries to fight — to Iraq, to Afghanistan, now to Iran — but there’s no money here for their own people.”
On a street corner nearby, a lackluster stall sells socks, water pistols and DVDs. There’s a Caribbean deli, an African restaurant and a dubious-looking bar advertising “live dancing — party time.” The local church, St Jerome’s, has services in English and Spanish.
In the south Bronx’s 16th congressional district, nearly one in seven people are jobless and average earnings are US$35,000. Only 8.7 per cent of residents have a university education and the population is ethnically diverse — 65 percent are Hispanic, 28 percent black and barely 2 percent white. To many of New York’s wealthier residents, the only reason to venture into the borough is to take in an occasional baseball game at the nearby Yankee stadium.
Only 3.4km apart, the areas have a 56-year gap in development, the research shows, saying that at the current rate of progress it would take until 2041 for the Upper East Side’s level of development to be typical nationwide.
Crossing a tree-lined street in the wealthier district, math teacher Sally Edgar called the findings “embarrassing.”
She says: “It reflects the government stepping back and expecting big business to provide. There’s a tremendous split between the really wealthy and the lower middle class.”
Not far from where she is standing, an apartment went on sale last year for an eye-watering US$50 million. The district is known to fans of Sex and the City as the home of the TV series’ aspirational, glamorous heroine Carrie Bradshaw.
It was also the stomping ground of Sherman McCoy, the fictional bond trader depicted in author Tom Wolfe’s 1987 portrait of Wall Street greed, The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not a “happy camper” these days regarding Taiwan? Taiwanese have not become more “CCP friendly” in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of spies and graft by the United Front Work Department, intimidation conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police/Coast Guard, and endless subversive political warfare measures, including cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and diplomatic isolation. The percentage of Taiwanese that prefer the status quo or prefer moving towards independence continues to rise — 76 percent as of December last year. According to National Chengchi University (NCCU) polling, the Taiwanese
It would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every US President Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging UK upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-Cold War order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In July last year, when Starmer became prime minister, the Labour Party was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority
US President Donald Trump is systematically dismantling the network of multilateral institutions, organizations and agreements that have helped prevent a third world war for more than 70 years. Yet many governments are twisting themselves into knots trying to downplay his actions, insisting that things are not as they seem and that even if they are, confronting the menace in the White House simply is not an option. Disagreement must be carefully disguised to avoid provoking his wrath. For the British political establishment, the convenient excuse is the need to preserve the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. Following their White House
US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought renewed scrutiny to the Taiwan-US semiconductor relationship with his claim that Taiwan “stole” the US chip business and threats of 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made processors. For Taiwanese and industry leaders, understanding those developments in their full context is crucial while maintaining a clear vision of Taiwan’s role in the global technology ecosystem. The assertion that Taiwan “stole” the US’ semiconductor industry fundamentally misunderstands the evolution of global technology manufacturing. Over the past four decades, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), has grown through legitimate means
RSS