GREEN RELEASES “OUR NEXT ECONOMY: ‘THE CREATIVE CITY’” IN SECOND OF FIVE POLICY PAPERS

 
Calls for Investment in “ICE,” Green and Manufacturing Sectors

Mark Green, New York’s first Public Advocate and candidate to serve as its third, today released Our Next Economy: THE Creative City, the second in a series of five policy papers proposing new solutions to old problems or “how to put the ‘new’ back in New York.”  These papers will be released for public comment then re-released, integrated with the ideas and suggestions of New Yorkers.  (Available in PDF or in HTML where you can comment).
 
“New York City over-invested in the finance, insurance and real estate (‘FIRE’) sector, and is paying a heavy price as measured in job losses,” said Green, an economic reformer who has authored several public policy books on economic issues including Closed Enterprise System, The Big Business Reader, and The Challenge of Hidden Profits.  In the introduction, he writes:

We know how we got into this mess...but how do we get out?  Where will the next generation of jobs come from?  How can we enhance real income to reduce poverty and enlarge the middle class? 
The answers lay in our human capital. For New York is a “State of Minds.”  There is no place on earth that better combines our innovative skills, educational institutions, media community, tech sector, niche manufacturing, and creative arts – not to mention our excellent financial and legal services.
 
As a City we need to make sure that we develop new ideas and new policies that capitalize on these natural advantages so we never again lose a new industry like biotechnology and once again become a magnet for new small innovative firms.  In an increasingly global information economy, New York City is unusually well-positioned to lead again.  We can become “THE Creative City,” if we craft smart policies that play to our strengths.

Our Next Economy proposes a commitment to six core values: Seeking Simplification, Achieving Affordability, Thinking Green, Rethinking Transportation, Providing Real-Time Information Online, and Utilizing Expert Retirees.

•    Seeking Simplification would provide New Yorkers with more accessible, consistent and reliable consumer oriented services. Job and Business Centers would be less scattered and made more widely available to New Yorkers through a commitment to being multi-lingual, extending hours, providing child care, and using technology.  The “TED.com: Ideas Worth Spreading” model would be implemented by working with local educational institutions to film innovative and compelling experts, placing them online with multilingual captions or dubbing for jobseekers and entrepreneurs all over our City to watch from the comfort of their own home.

•    Achieving Affordability through tax incentives and funding to provide affordable residential and commercial spaces for residents and businesses to grow and thrive.

•    Thinking Green with a continued to commitment to supporting Green Jobs and Green Business as was outlined in our last policy paper, “A Plan for a Greater New York.”

•    Rethinking Transportation by phasing in Congestion Pricing and implementing a Transportation 2.0 system to use technology to notify riders of service issues to keep commerce moving better.

•    Providing Real-Time Information Online to improve City government with Open Data, like sharing non-private information from the 311 system, for its next logical step Open 311, so that everyone can learn what’s going wrong in real time.  And expanding the Universal Internet launched last month in New York City to provide all of us with some form of internet access.

•    Utilizing Expert Retirees by creating the Professional Service Corps to assist start-ups and serve as economic ambassadors attracting or keeping talent and companies in the New York City marketplace.

Economic development, argues Green’s economic paper, should be specifically addressed through Workforce Development and Business Development. 

Workforce Development means a commitment to:
•    training people who are both unemployed and underemployed for jobs that are both high in quality and demand;
•    measuring our investment in training and the current demands of the market place; and
•    creativity in our workforce though targeted tax incentives like a two year exemption from unincorporated business taxes and a local City version of the Open Source Tax Credit. 

Business Development can be improved through a real commitment to small businesses by:
•    providing funding through $50,000 micro-seeds;
•    creating affordable spaces through tax incentives;
•    lowering healthcare insurance costs by allowing small business to buy into City health insurance plans; and
•    lessening regulatory burdens through simplification.

Part of business development involves saving what remains of our shrunken manufacturing sector by:
•    amending and better enforcing the zoning code to protect niche manufacturing;
•    launching a “Made In New York” campaign; and
•    expanding Industrial Business Zone tax credits to provide benefits for green, biotechnology and other niche manufacturing.

“While New York City loses it dominance in the financial markets, it still remains as a major hub in the new information economy for the ICE sector [information, culture and education] allowing cross pollination across all sectors to makes New York City the perfect place to become ‘THE Creative City.’” said Green.

Green has worked on economic growth and justice issues his whole professional life as described in his paper’s introduction:

In the 1970s I co-wrote The Closed Enterprise System and The Big Business Reader on how to make our economic system more competitive and pro-consumer -- and was the head of Public Citizen's Congress Watch from 1977 to 1980, successfully pushing for changes in the federal antitrust laws. In 1986, I wrote The Challenge of Hidden Profits about the "corpocracy." From 1990-2001, as the New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner and Public Advocate, I produced a series of reports "The Poor Pay More…for Less," helped change the way commercial carting is structured, reduced regulatory burdens by shrinking the number of lines of commerce requiring consumer licenses from 82 to 45, restricted tobacco ads to kids, issued a consumer's guide to hospitals, released annual "Ranking Banking" scorecards, and early on exposed how predatory lending and sub-prime loans threatened the equity of homeowners, especially in minority communities.