As usual, New York City survived the worst of times. According "to most standard measures of economic health," reports Patrick McGeehan in THE NEW YORK TIMES, "New York City's recovery from the financial crisis and the recession it started is well under way." The reason for that might be that this city, like most influential areas, operates according to the values of what has been called by economic development leader Richard Florida as "The Creative Class."
Years ago that group of thought and action leaders were called visionaries, new establishment, bohemian, and counterculture. Over the centuries what they shared was the ability and the support system to buck the norms of mainstream society and put together their own lifestyle and approach to producing wealth on their own terms. Because of that mindset and organizing smarts they were the real operators.
Even in a digital age, there's a payoff to being in proximity with The Creative Class of that decade. That's why unemployed and underemployed lawyers and law students paying high tuition stay in New York City. They exist on a platform of hope, optimism, and no middle-class fear of debt. It was Jackson Lears in THE NEW YORK TIMES who identified debt as economically enlightened. His article "The American Way of Debt," states having more liabilities than assets is "a strategy for survival and a tool for economic advance."
Those lawyers who lost jobs or walked away from careers in law and stayed in pricey New York and those students who are amassing six figure debt in acquiring a law degree in this city likely will do better than the risk-averse types who moved back to Akron, Ohio to bunk with family or gave up the law degree for one in teaching. Everyone I know who is finally making some serious money as the recovery takes hold were philosophical about living off credit cards rather than in angst or shame. A strong year can wipe out most of that.
One of the several times I was without income was the recession of 1982. I was in the New York Metro area. I had an unsold house back in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I called a headhunter to ask if I should go back to that house. "No, never." He said and with such emphasis that I got it that there is something to place. In 2002 in his landmark book THE RISE OF THE CREATIVE CLASS, Florida documented that with research as well as anecdotes.
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