I saw this posted on the former Half Sigma blog. If you were hoping Anthony Weiner would win the democratic primary, it looks like you will be disappointed. There’s a month to go and people tend to forget quickly that one of the candidates is a mental patient, but even New Yorkers have too much self-respect to give Weiner a third chance. The next mayor will be the dreary socialist, the dreary bureaucrat or the flamboyant communist. The New York Times is backing the communist, to no one’s surprise, so he is the pick

The fact is the forces that drive the fortunes of a big city are beyond the control of the political class. A city is measured by its crime rate, public school system, unemployment rate, property values and culture. There’s some other stuff that we judge a city by, but that’s enough. Demographics drive the crime rate. San Francisco is 43% white and 33% Asian. Both groups have very low crimes rates so San Francisco has a low crime rate. Detroit is 80% black and has a crime rate commensurate with the black population.

Schools are similar, but median income pops up here. Areas with a solid middle class composed of families will have good public schools. Areas with a big underclass full of baby mommas and absentee fathers will have crappy public schools. You can’t fix that with good policy. These class and race issues are beyond the reach of government. Even if you gave city government dictatorial power, they could not fix the broken families that make up most of Newark or Camden or Baltimore. Government is not God.

Of course, the local economy is entirely driven by serendipity. If your city is lucky to be based on industry with a future, your city has a future. Cities in New England, for example, that depended upon making shoes or paint were looking good 100 years ago. When the banks sold off those industries to foreigners, those cities collapsed. Lowell Mass was a great mill town into the 20’s and 30’s, but textiles moved South and Lowell went down the crapper. No amount of good government was going to fix that problem.

I could go on, but the fact is the big things affecting a city are out of the reach of politicians, unless they are willing to be immoral or corrupt. For example, Giuliani gets credit for reviving New York by lowering crime. What he really did was ride the financial boom to push out the blacks from Manhattan. The newly rich were willing to look the other way as the cops hassled young black males with the policy of stop and frisk. They also agreed with polices to drive off businesses that cater to the lower classes.

The great credit boom that blew up Wall Street filled NYC with rich people and rich people like a nice places to live. Rudy did fix the police department, but he could not have done it without the support of the army of bean counters filling the ranks of the booming financial houses located in the city. The next mayor will have no impact on the city. As long as the free money keeps flowing and the demographics keep going this way, the next mayor will do just fine, regardless of their ideology. Even a commie will not screw it up.