Abstract

Making New York City Safe for Plutocracy

This article focuses on the influence of plutocracy in the local politics of New York City, New York. Permanent voter registration, eliminating the most complex election petition laws in the country, and proportional representation are obvious remedies for New York's corrupt one-party system. With proportional representation it might be possible to revive political life in the city, where municipal workers' low salaries subsidize Donald Trump's tax breaks; where the bridges are falling down and the streets are blowing up; where condos get built in the rivers and people sleep in the subways. Labor parties, ecology parties, African-American parties, Latino parties and tenant panics could unfreeze political life in this world city that drags itself painfully in the rear of the world's democratic movement.