Tyler Cowen highlights an important problem:
“The political economy problem here again is that residents just won’t care enough about the quality of life in their city. A ride on the New York City subway system, or a walk through central San Francisco, will confirm the view that two of America’s greatest cities are grossly underinvesting in the quality of life.”
His analysis is, however, incomplete. Often missing in most studies of US economic problems is the near total absence of discussions involving potential lessons to be learned from the experiences of other countries. People in the rest of the world (where 95% of the population resides) are also dealing with issues related to healthcare, inequality, urban overcrowding, etc., and, yet, most American economists do not pay much attention to events/developments occurring outside US.
For instance, a simple question that Tyler Cowen’s piece fails to address is the following:
Why is the quality of life better in expensive Scandinavian cities or East/South-East Asian cities (e.g. Singapore)? Is there something New York or San Francisco can learn from the experiences of those cities?