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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I suspect that working class people present in lower manhattan have a reason to be there and should have their access made easier, rather than harder, because of that.

Every human or even non-human animal with sentience present in lower Manhattan presumably has a reason to be there. However, commuting from other areas into lower Manhattan entails limited space on roadways, which translates into limited time. And some peoples' time is worth more than others.

An area staffed and entered only by doctors, lawyers, accountants and so on is going to having leaky plumbing, dirty windows, and crumbling buildings. Plus all the nice-to-haves: shop workers, barbers and the like.

Wages are not a fixed edict from God, and can adjust if congestion pricing leads to a shortage of working class workers in Lower Manhattan.

Via supply and demand, wages can thus rise for working class workers. And meanwhile, if they so choose, doctors, lawyers, and accountants can DIY to fix their own plumbing, windows, and buildings, even though it's likely a rounding error for them as to a pay-bump for their in-house working class workers to compensate for a $9 (or $18? day surcharge).

There's also an abundance of lower-tier, lower-earning white-collar knowledge workers (e.g., compliance, operations) who live within lower Manhattan who would be first to DIY trades themselves, and perhaps serve as after-hours skilled-labor providers for those who make more.

In the first place all those except tradespeople who require a van can, and indeed mostly do, commute in by transit - in the second place, all that will happen is that for things like plumbing in the area prices will simply rise by the cost of paying the charge, so in the end all the costs get passed on the users of the services, which would seem ideal.