This passage from de Blasio’s speech struck me:
New York has faced fiscal collapse, a crime epidemic, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. But now, in our time, we face a different crisis — an inequality crisis. It’s not often the stuff of banner headlines in our daily newspapers. It’s a quiet crisis, but one no less pernicious than those that have come before.
Its urgency is read on the faces of our neighbors and their children, as families struggle to make it against increasingly long odds.
The idea that inequality is blighting the lives of average New Yorkers, who have to bear the intolerable burden of other people being rich, is absurd. It is sadly true that many New Yorkers struggle against incredibly long odds. But the fact that there are very rich people in the city has nothing to do with that. Goldman Sachs could be razed to the ground tomorrow and it wouldn’t help the average New Yorker in the least.