NYC is Dead Forever... Here's Why | JamesAltucher.com - James Altucher:
"In early March, many people (not me), left NYC when they felt it would provide safety from the virus and they no longer needed to go to work and all the restaurants were closed. People figured, 'I’ll get out for a month or two and then come back.' They are all still gone. And then in June, during rioting and looting, a second wave of NYCers (this time including me) left.... I was a little nervous when I saw videos of rioters after curfew trying to break into my building.... Now a third wave of people is leaving....
"Businesses are remote and they aren’t returning to the office. And it’s a death spiral — the longer offices remain empty, the longer they will remain empty....
"Broadway is closed until at least the spring. The Lincoln Center is closed. All the museums are closed. Forget about the tens of thousands of jobs lost in these cultural centers. Forget even about the millions of dollars of tourist-generated revenues lost by the closing of these centers. There are thousands of performers, producers, artists, and the entire ecosystem of art, theater, production, curation, that surrounds these cultural centers. People who have worked all of their lives for the right to be able to perform even once on Broadway, whose lives and careers have been put on hold....
"Around late May, I took walks and saw that many places were boarded up. OK, I thought, because the protesting was leading to looting and the restaurants were protecting themselves. They’ll be OK. Looking closer, I’d see the signs. For Lease. For Rent.... Yelp estimates that 60% of restaurants around the United States have closed. My guess is more than 60% will be closed in New York City.... If building owners and landlords lose their prime tenants (the store fronts on the bottom floor, the offices on the middle floors, the well-to-do on the top floors, etc.) then they go out of business....
"There are almost 600,000 college students spread out through NYC.... I don’t know of any college fully coming back right away.... Let’s say just 100,000 of those 600,000 don’t return to school and decide not to rent an apartment in New York City.... That’s a lot of landlords who will not be able to pay their own bills..... So now it ripples back to the landlords, to the support staff, to the banks, to the professors, etc....
"Everyone has spent the past five months adapting to a new lifestyle. Nobody wants to fly across the country for a two-hour meeting when you can do it just as well on Zoom. I can go see 'live comedy' on Zoom. I can take classes from the best teachers in the world for almost free online.... You can live in your hometown in the middle of wherever. And you can be just as productive, make the same salary, have higher quality of life with a cheaper cost to live....
"It will be cheaper for businesses to function more remotely and bandwidth is only getting faster. Wait for events and conferences and even meetings and maybe even office spaces to start happening in virtual realities once everyone is spread out from midtown Manhattan to all over the country. The quality of restaurants will start to go up in all the second- and then third-tier cities as talent and skill flow to the places that can quickly make use of them. Ditto for cultural events. And then people will ask, 'Wait a second, I was paying over 16% in state and city taxes and these other states and cities have little to no taxes? And I don’t have to deal with all the other headaches of NYC?'.... What reason will people have to go back to NYC?
"I love my life in NYC. I have friends all over NY.... I could go a few minutes by Uber and meet with anyone or go play PingPong or go to a movie.... I could go out at night to my favorite restaurants and then see my favorite performers perform. I could go to the park and play chess, see friends. I could take advantage of all this wonderful city has to offer. No more."
Read more: https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/nyc-is-dead-forever-heres-why/
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