This year marks the 50th anniversary of Singapore's independence. In that two score and 10 years, Singapore went from impoverished Third World backwater with far less than what Long Island enjoys in 2013, and still recovering from the ravages of World War II and the Japanese occupation, to an ultra-modern, high-tech, independent mercantile city-state whose citizens enjoy a higher standard of living than most Long Islanders.
Its retired prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, wrote a lengthily memoir back in 2000 called From Third World to First World: The Singapore Story whereupon he described his country's astonishing metamorphosis. As the afterglow of the 1950's-style American Dream begins to fade on Long Island, a good question might be, if Singapore, why not Long Island? Two things, deeply embedded in our history, hold us back.
Our business leaders don't comprehend marcoeconomics. They have forgotten that when working families earn more money, the economy grows. Well-paid workers become consumers that stimulate market demands, investors that provide capital for business development, and taxpayers whose monies build and maintain the educational, governmental, and physical infrastructure that allows economies to expand.
Poorly-paid workers don't have money to purchase goods and services, don't have money to invest, and are apt to cost more in tax dollars than they ever contribute as taxpayers. They have forgotten that new wealth is not generated by selling foreign-made goods but by actually manufacturing those goods. F
or example, when the Levitt & Sons Ranch house in which I dwell was built in 1951, the house was worth $9000 and the largest employer in the neighborhood was Grumman's, a company that manufactured aircraft and related components and paid middle class wages. Today this house is worth about $380,000 - 42 times its original price - and the largest employment source are retail establishments paying $9.00 before taxes. That's not a formula for a thriving mercantile economy let alone for a sustainable middle class society.
What's actually lacking is economic diversification. During the 19th Century, Long Islanders cultivated crops, raised livestock, harvested shellfish, maintained whaling and fishing fleets, built ships, ran factories, mined sand, grew firewood, and had overseas ventures via "the China trade"; a unit of three counties (Queens and Brooklyn were not yet part of NYC and Nassau had not been created yet) as economically productive and diverse as many small European countries.
Take Hicksville, for example. At the turn-of-the-last-century, with about 1,300 citizens, the town was a varied commercial center. In addition to the ubiquitous and obligatory farms, general stores, and a few blacksmith shops, there were two huge pickle factories, a soap and candle factory, two bottling plants, a few gold-beating and jewelry-making establishments, several hotels, several tailoring shops and a lumberyard. In terms of types of business establishments per person, Hicksville was more commercially diverse than it is today - a similar situation found all over Long Island.
If our business leaders don't comprehend macroeconomics, than our political leaders don't understand business elsewhile they wouldn't sustain an obsolete paradigm that inhibits economic growth. Rather than accept that the post-War suburban building boom has been over since the 1980's, that Nassau and Suffolk must invariably become more urbanized and require unified municipal government, our political leaders cling to NIMBYism, Local Yokelism, and fragmentation (209 governmental entities for only two counties).
Redundancies in service add to the tax burden, antiquated zoning codes restrict housing to modes that are increasingly unaffordable, obsolete methods of revenue-generation (property tax was fine in agricultural days when one's property was the source of one's income), undermine the stability of both laboring and managerial classes.
These two shortcomings fuel our other ills. Without economic growth and a solid middle class, the challenges faced by rising educational and medical costs, infrastructure-upkeep, and environmental conservation (in light of all the other Superstorms that reside in the future), and other basic public services become insurmountable. We could see some future author write a book called From First World to Third World: The Long Island Story or we could start asking ourselves this simple question: If Singapore, why not Long Island?
Want to learn more about the history of Levittown and the surrounding communities? Visit www.levittownhistoricalsociety.org
