Here’s How to Save Cities But I Doubt People Will Listen (Part 2)

In yesterday’s email, I explained how the secret to saving cities was not to “think outside the box,” but rather to smash the box.

As promised, here are some of my “destroy the box” ideas for Cities 2.0.

A) CITYBUCKS (e.g. NYCBucks, LABucks, etc.)

A big problem facing cities is our addiction to Amazon.

I want batteries! Amazon gets them to me tomorrow. I want nectarines! Amazon gets them to me in an hour. I want soap! Amazon sent it to me yesterday because it has me on “subscription” and knows when I run out.

Up to 1/3 of small businesses in major cities might never reopen. 

How do we remove people’s addictions to Amazon and get them to buy local?

A brief interlude…

---

Economics 101: The Money Multiplier Lesson

For every $1 spent in an economy, it adds $3–10 in economic growth. 

How come? If I spent $1 to buy a newspaper, the newspaper guy spends that $1 to buy some gum, the deli guy then spends that $1 to buy flowers, the flower guy spends that $1 to buy a coffee, etc. 

So $1 spent added $4 in economic growth to the region. 

When you spend $1 on Amazon, economic growth is limited. It’s unclear if Amazon ever spends that dollar. And the money leaves your city. The key is to create incentives for people to spend $1 in your local city so that the economic growth stays in the city.

---

Enter… CityBucks. 

1. A cryptocurrency that can only be spent in local stores. The crypto feature knows if you are local and keeps track of all the transactions. 
2. Mining — a way that people can earn more CityBucks — happens every time a CityBuck is spent, both for the seller and the buyer. For example, if I spend 10 CityBucks in a restaurant, maybe I get an additional 1/4 CityBuck in my crypto wallet, and so does the restaurant owner.  This acts like a “negative sales tax” for people who are spending and selling locally — i.e., they make extra, instead of spend extra, the more transactions they make. This gives incentive to GO to a city and SPEND money in that city.
3. CityBucks can be redeemed five years later into U.S. dollars. 
4. All city taxpayers are given an initial universal basic income (UBI) of CityBucks. All tourists who book stays in hotels are given an allocation of CityBucks when they arrive. Every store in a city will accept CityBucks because they know it will be redeemed by the city into dollars and they also know they will be making more CityBucks the more they accept them because of the “mining” feature.
5. Whatever city implements their local CityBucks (for instance, if NYC implements NYCBucks), will be able to issue municipal bonds easily. If you release $10 million worth of CityBucks and they are spent, and we get a sense of the money multiplier, then we know exactly how much in sales taxes the city will generate in the future and they can borrow off of that. The good thing about borrowing fairly cheaply is that you can use that money to plug the current hole of deficits versus declining revenues so you can continue paying for critical services.

B) THE FEDERAL RESERVE INFLATES

The Federal Reserve recently announced that its big goal is to get back to 2% “average” inflation. 

Why is this a big deal? 

Everyone is frightened that if the U.S. prints too much money, we could get hyperinflation. Which means if you spent $3 on a loaf of bread last week, maybe it will cost $1 million a month from now with hyperinflation. 

But this is not what is happening. Prices are going down. Hotel prices slashed, air travel prices are slashed, clothing prices are down, of course real estate prices in major cities are down, wages are down at many companies, etc.

(The last time there was deflation was during the Great Depression, leading to mass hunger, food lines like above, and unemployment. We are at risk of that now.)

When prices are down, people wait before they buy because they think, “Well, it might be down MORE next week.” And then when next week prices are, in fact, down, people wait longer. And so on. Deflation leads to depression, leads to more businesses bankrupt, leads to higher unemployment. 

The Federal Reserve has been desperately trying to get inflation by buying Treasury bills and corporate bonds. 

How does this get inflation? When they buy Treasury bills, it brings down interest rates, which brings down the rates you get in a savings account, which gives the consumer more reason to spend money or invest money, since they are losing money by keeping it in a savings account. 

But it doesn’t work. When people are scared, they don’t spend money. 

The Federal Reserve should buy up the municipal bonds of cities. In other words, if NYC owes a bank $1 billion, then the Federal Reserve can buy that debt and say to NYC, “Listen, we still want the money back, but you don’t have to start paying us back for another 10 years. Get your act together first.”

This will increase spending! Cities, free of debt, will spend more on essential services, will spend more on infrastructure, which will create jobs, will spend more… period. More spending equals more inflation.

C) SELL OFF HOSPITALS AND UNIVERSITIES

This won’t be popular.

But we’re not here in this article trying to win a popularity contest. 

Why should Gotham City own the Arkham Asylum? Why are they in the hospital business?

NYC owns 27 hospitals. The hospitals make $6.7 billion in revenues but lose money every year. 

NYC should be in the city business, not the hospital business. There are many hospital companies that provide great healthcare and know how to make hospitals profitable at the same time. 

NYC can sell (or long-term lease) their hospitals for approximately $20 billion. Maybe more. Maybe they can sell their universities (NYC is also not in the education business and colleges are going down the tubes now anyway) for $10 billion. 

NYC’s total debt is around $120 billion. With this one move, they could get rid of 25% of their debt, making them capable of borrowing and spending money on new initiatives, as well as helping them avoid any layoffs. 

Every large city could do some version of this. Maybe not hospitals, but they could sell bridges or tunnels, or lotteries, or other assets owned by the city.

Heck, sell part of Central Park. I don’t care what people think. Get jobs back, get incentives back, get innovation back, get revenues up, and you can make all the parks you want after that.

D) GET RID OF BLUE COLLAR LICENSING

What do people want? JOBS. Prosperity makes a city better. 

What stops people from getting jobs? Blue collar licenses. 

Yes, white collar licenses are also ridiculous. Get $300,000 in debt in law school, then spend thousands to take various bar exams just so you can help someone get out of a traffic ticket. That’s B.S. but that’s for another story. 

Here’s an example: Many cities require a license to be an interior decorator. 

Are you kidding me? You mean if I want to get paid to choose wallpaper, I have to take a test, pay for a license, etc.?

Yes.

In Washington D.C., for instance, I would have to spend 2,200 days (even years) in either apprenticeship or education classes, and then spend $364 for a license. So guess how many people who live in housing projects are able to become interior designers? 

ZERO.

Licenses for hairdressers, manicurists, travel agents, gas pump attendants, hair braiders, TV installers, plumbers, etc. have to go away. 

People need to get jobs without friction. That’s how you get people employed and self-sufficient and not in need of social services. 

Los Angeles has blue collar license requirements for 192 different jobs, the most of any city. This is a huge regressive tax on the poor. 

Reform blue collar licensing laws. 

D) GET RID OF ZONING LAWS AND RENT CONTROL

Zoning laws say things like, “This block is just for apartments, and this block can have stores.” 

Well, why? Why limit where I can open a business or live? 

If you limit the number of places where I can live, then the supply of apartments goes down. When supply goes down but demand remains the same, then the price of rent goes up, making it more expensive to live in a city with zoning laws — i.e., every city. 

Also, get rid of outdated rent control laws in major cities. 

Up to half of rentals in NYC might be regulated in some way by rent control or rent stabilization. 

“Rent stabilization” is a horrible set of laws many cities have that allow people who moved in 50 years ago to pay the same rent.

There are people with five bedroom apartments in NYC that are paying $1,000 a month. Prices in NYC for those apartments might be as high as $30,000 a month or more. 

But why are they as high as $30,000 a month? Again, supply and demand. The more apartments that are rent stabilized or rent controlled means fewer available apartments, means supply is down, means prices go way up.

E) EVICTION HOLIDAY 

Here’s a big joke: Don’t pay rent for 10 months and then pay it all in one chunk.

Are you kidding me? Before the pandemic, the average American had $400 in savings. Where are people going to get 10 months of rent to suddenly pay after 55 million people total went on unemployment insurance?

This plan has not been well thought-out. 

This is what you do, and you do it just once: 

• The renter gets a pass from the landlord.
• The landlord gets a pass from the bank.
• The bank goes to the Federal Reserve and gets the money from them. 
• The Federal Reserve achieves its goal of inflation. 

There’s a lot of things wrong with this idea. It’s not fair, for instance, to the people who have been paying their rent all along.

My answer: So what? Not everything is fair. This is about saving cities. A rising tide lifts all boats. If cities are saved, the value of apartments goes up, more businesses move in, more people get jobs, salaries go up, everyone wins.

F) SELL OFF FEDERAL HIGHWAYS

In 2006, Chicago sold the Chicago Skyway for $1.8 billion. It had been losing money for decades. Now it makes money. 

Not only does selling a highway generate money for the city or state, but usually improves the performance of the highway as the new owner uses profits to protect infrastructure, and gets creative about congestion pricing, etc. to reduce traffic and make more money. 

I don’t know how many highways exist in the U.S., but the  country / states / cities are not in the highway business. Sell to the companies that are and use the money to reduce debt. 

This creates jobs, raises money, wipes out debt, etc. And highways are going to be smaller sources of revenue in the future anyway due to less travel post-COVID.

G) REFORM LAW ENFORCEMENT

In 2016/2017, I helped start a company (meaning, I was in the room when conversations were happening) that created a nonlethal device for law enforcement. 

The Bolawrap is a device that shoots out a steel cable and wraps around the person who was shot at. Think of it as long distance handcuffs. I’ve been wrapped. It doesn’t hurt. And the more I struggled, the tighter the Wrap became. 

But isn’t the Taser nonlethal? No. Google it. In fact, the cofounder of Taser is now the president of Wrap Technologies. Andrew Yang has suggested police forces look into it. Many police forces are already using it and lives are being saved every day. 

Want to avoid riots and looting and even protests? Stop killing people.

This is a start. Are some of these ideas bad? Probably. 

But there are a lot of laws and ideas that are much worse. Whoever came up with the idea of the government backing student loans has done more harm to the millennial and gen Z generations (who now sit on $1.6 TRILLION in personal debt) than any war possibly could. 

Cities need to be the places where people are free to exchange ideas, start cultural projects, start businesses, and succeed. 

Not where they get sucked under by obscure regulations, arbitrary taxes and fees, invisible penalties like rent control, and declining social services because of lower and lower tax revenues. 

You can’t go back to old fake utopias and solutions that never worked. 

Cities 2.0 need to do more than reward old bad behavior. They have to create new behaviors that increase prosperity for everyone.

The post Here’s How to Save Cities But I Doubt People Will Listen (Part 2) appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/2GVYwpA via website design phoenix

Here’s How to Save Cities But I Doubt People Will Listen (Part 1)

I don’t care how many people talk about “grit” or “energy.” I don’t care about the history or the romance of a city. “Grit” won’t generate the money needed to pay garbage collectors, or teachers, or healthcare workers.

People said to me, “Why don’t you focus on solutions instead of just writing that NYC is dead forever?” 

OK, I will. But I don’t think anyone is going to implement these ideas. People are content to grab political power at all costs while the population fools itself until it’s too late.

Here’s the basic philosophy. Cities need to: 

I) ENCOURAGE INNOVATION

This is the No. 1 reason people come to cities. Immigrants come to find jobs and opportunities. Opportunities here because people are innovative when they can share ideas with others.

The benefit of a city is that ideas collide. Put millions of people in a dense area and you have trillions of opportunities for “idea sex,” where people exchange ideas and innovation happens. 

II) INCENTIVIZE PEOPLE TO COME

For instance, in NYC, I see many people have this misguided view that life will be great. It will be like the ’70s again. Rents will be low and artists will flourish.

Are you kidding me?

(NYC in the ’70s)

A) NYC was a piece of garbage in the ’70s, with violence and filth the normal ways to describe it  then. 

B) Yes, there were artists in the ’70s. But artists have been coming to NYC since forever. Not just the ’70s. 

C) Yes, apartments were cheaper then. But that doesn’t happen magically overnight like people think. To really make NYC affordable will take decades of horror before you see affordable rents. Unless the ideas below work.  

III) STOP BEING IN THE HOSPITAL OR EDUCATION OR HIGHWAY BUSINESS 

Cities should stay in the “city” business. More on this later.

CITIES 2.0: WHAT I WOULD DO

Anyone who thinks a dead city will lead to this utopia of low rents and greater culture doesn’t realize how cities work.

A city with spiking deficits and declining revenues leads to:

A) Fewer teachers, police, healthcare workers, infrastructure repairs, garbage collectors, transit workers, health facilities, schools, which leads to greater crime, worse education, worse healthcare, more garbage, worse infrastructure, etc. 

B) Which leads to fewer tourists

C) And fewer businesses wanting to relocate

D) And higher taxes, disincentivizing people and businesses from moving into the city

E) Which leads to fewer people employed

F) Which leads to more crime (with less police) and worse health (with less healthcare) and more people hungry (with less money for social services to help the hungry), etc. 

G) Which leads to a giant spiral down with even fewer people, fewer services, worse revenues, etc. 

This spirals all the way down and gets you a Detroit, or a Scranton, or a Baltimore, or worse. Every city in the world has gone through this. 

The key is to not think “outside the box” but smash the box.

Tomorrow, in Part 2 of this series, I’ll go into details on some of my ideas for how to do this. Stay tuned…

The post Here’s How to Save Cities But I Doubt People Will Listen (Part 1) appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/2FkNKJm via website design phoenix

My Predictions for the Year 2084

In 2015, someone asked me, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” 

I can’t remember my answer but I can tell you one thing for sure about how I answered: I was wrong. 

In 2010 the iPad came out and Steve Jobs wouldn’t let his children use it for fear it would be too addictive. Bandwidth speeds were about 2.5 Mbps. CNBC anchors were laughing at me for saying Apple would be the first trillion-dollar company and… that year I got married. All of those statements would be impossible to say 10 years later.

Perhaps the best sentences that can easily describe 10 years from now and be correct will be statements like: “That seems unbelievable!” and, perhaps, “That could never happen here!” 

But let’s give it a try! Ten years from now (or 64) we can take the trends that exist now, throw in a little bit (or a lot) of spicy tension, and sweeten it with some chaos and a dash of inspiration. What we end up with is a clusterf*ck planet mixed with cool high tech. 

A) BANDWIDTH

We’re upping a “g” almost every two years and upping bandwidth at an exponential rate. With “10g” on our phones, we’ll look back at 2020 and laugh about how slow the internet was and how Zoom calls were so low quality and how you actually had to “sign up” for bandwidth as opposed to it being a natural right, an important commodity of air itself.

My children will laugh at me when I’m nostalgic for the days when it wasn’t so easy to go into a complete virtual reality with millions of pixels every centimeter and once you are transported in it it will feel as real to you or more as any other reality. 

With 100GB/ps we’ll be able to not only work remotely, but work remotely in the same office.

I will be able to “VR-port” into work, go into my office, see my coworkers, go to meetings, all without leaving my home. Haptic sensors will not only make me feel everything I touch in Microsoft VROffice Suite but also massage my muscles so they don’t atrophy in case I do overtime. 

B) AUGMENTED REALITY WILL OPERATE SIDE BY SIDE WITH ACTUAL REALITY

Robyn and I will be walking by an Amazon 3D printing store and she’ll see a coupon for bras on the door and I’ll see a coupon for some marijuana. We’ll walk by a restaurant and she’ll see, about 12 inches in front of her eye, the vegan menu and I’ll see the paleo menu.

We’ll walk by a neighbor and if his settings are set for “everyone” then we’ll see a floating image of the last movie he saw or recent photos from his latest vacation. Or a listing of his political beliefs, on display for all to see just in case you want to have (or avoid) a conversation with him. 

This will be a direct result of increases in bandwidth, storage, and user interfaces for AR. 

C) THE RISE OF CRYPTO

When COVID finally ends, many will abandon the expensive cities for safety reasons, quality of life reasons, financial reasons.

Because of increases in bandwidth and the ease of use of Zoom, there will be no more need for office buildings to be full. People could live anywhere and work in the 2D virtual office or in Microsoft VROffice.

With fewer people and companies, the tax revenues will plunge just when the deficits are spiking. Mayors in each city will be forced to fire teachers, garbage collectors, police, etc. Crime spikes, garbage everywhere, and fewer tourists will want to go to each city. 

Cities will need to create incentives! Each city will create a local cryptocurrency to provide incentives. New York City, for instance, will create “NYCBucks.”

The idea: Everybody in NY gets a steady UBI (universal basic income) in NYCBucks (instead of dollars), and everyone who visits NYC as a tourist gets an allocation based on how many days they would be in the city. You could only spend your NYCBucks in NYC.

For every transaction both the buyer and the seller “mine” micro NYCBucks pro rata with the size of the transaction. For every 100 NYCBucks you mine, you can exchange for $100 and $100 is deducted from your state and city taxes. 

Tourism begins to come back to cities. And businesses return and require more employees to be local. Cities, for the moment, are saved. 

D) U.S. CURRENCY WILL COLLAPSE, BUT NOT THE WAY PEOPLE THINK

PART 1: Everyone is worried about hyperinflation.

“The Fed isn’t a printing press!” irate home economists screech into the Twitter void.

Unfortunately the value of a currency is based not on just supply but also on demand. The demand for the dollar is too high. Everyone in the world wants out of theirs and into ours.

The Federal Reserve right now is scared to death of DEFLATION. They would kill for some inflation right now. So they print more and more money. 

PART II: The Great Secession

The Blues don’t like the Reds. They think they are fascists. And the Reds also, coincidentally, think the Blues are fascists.

In 2020, there are three electric grids in the United States: East, West, and Texas. Texas secedes first.

The Army refuses to get involved. Other states begin to secede. And soon all of the states secede in one giant Secession Convention held on Zoom.

Each state works out trade agreements with the other states, in an EU like fashion. Washington D.C. is kept on life support but with only the Departments of State, Treasury, and Defense.

A rotating group of governors or lieutenant governors are in charge of each department. Allocations are decided by representatives from each state who will occasionally meet via Zoom. Capital Hill is turned into a museum to attract declining tourism. 

PART III: The Blue states do aggressive crypto-contact-tracing. 

Crypto to track everyone with coronavirus and those they go near. And the more you use it, the more “tracing crypto” you mine, which the governments of the Blue states translate into Blue Dollars. 

But then the executives of the Blue states realize it’s not enough to contact trace but also compliance trace.

You have to make sure they are using their masks. You have to make sure they are washing hands. Or quarantining when sick or blood sugar spikes for the diabetics, or older people keep more socially distanced.

But then it’s best for society if compliance also includes any hate speech, or maybe hate thoughts, or being around people who may have been around people who didn’t think the right thoughts. “You have to keep with the times,” the media will cry.

More and more people are Social Justice Mining and the governments of the Blue states need to borrow money from the Red states to fend off hyperinflation.

The Red state bankers are getting tons of fees putting together the bonds for the Blue states under the premise that these contained the densest, most successful cities and were not liable to default. 

But the Red state bankers will get too greedy, the terms too egregious, the Blue states too desperate for money and each individual state’s currency starts to devalue, leading to a currency crisis.

And since Blue Dollars and Red Dollars are mostly tied to the old U.S. dollar, the dollar starts to crash vis-a-vis the euro. The Red state banks collapse because of all the debt the Blue states owe them and the Red state currency collapses, triggering a Blue state collapse as well.

As a last resort, the people decide that the incentive crypto dollars they had been using (e.g. NYCBucks mentioned above) will be the currency for all of the states.

The dominoes fall on every major fiat currency around the world and they all switch to a fork of USBucks called EarthBucks. EarthBucks and USBucks usually trade at 1:1. 

The domination of crypto will be complete.

E) STORAGE WILL BE 100X IN SPEED, SECURITY, AND CAPACITY

Because of VR demand and enormous blockchain demands now that crypto is widely adopted, cloud storage demands will be 1000x what they currently are.

The biggest companies in the world will be Amazon, Google, Dropbox, Apple but mostly for providing and upkeeping cloud storage and security for data. Every day of 2030 will add up to more information and data created than the entirety of the human race from 0–2025 AD. 

F) DNA COMPUTING AND QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY

With DNA computing, NP problems will be solvable — including breaking public key cryptography codes, which means crypto keys can be decoded. Which means crypto currencies can be stolen.

Although quantum computing never will never work out (Murphy’s Law is constantly being broken), quantum cryptography is solved (it’s a simpler problem than quantum computing) and developed to ensure the safety of crypto after traditional public keys are decoded. 

G) 3D GENOMICS

In 2020, genomics is in a state of 2D stagnation. Yes, the genome was sequenced and diseases based on single-gene mutations (e.g. Tay Sachs) are being regularly cured with CRISP technologies. But diseases based on multi-gene mutations are still impossible to compute. The addition of DNA computing perfectly is suited to solve the problem, uncovering the gene pairs that mutated for all cancers, heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer’s.

And then later… IQ, emotional intelligence, athletic ability, charisma. The Chinese and Texas governments have no ethical issues quickly using 3D genomics to create a country of super intelligent babies. Nobody knows what the final result will be. 

H) CRYPTO IoT AND ACOMMERCE (AUTO ECOMMERCE)

Everything that can be chipped, will be.

The smart refrigerator will scan when you are running low on milk, do a blockchain transaction with the wallet at the grocery store, a drone will drop the milk in the panel in the back of the house feeding into the refrigerator. The more transactions the refrigerator does, the more USBucks are mined.

If you run every day, your sneakers will signal when they are worn out and a new pair is ordered.

If your cortisol spikes, your therapist will try to contact you. If you read the news and feel angry, the government will keep track of your actions. Maybe soft music will start playing.

Big Data and AI plus the tracking of neurochemicals will allow for Minority Report-style situations where crimes can be predicted before they occur.

All data is tracked and there are still pockets of society where social justice tracing keeps the population in line.

I) GAMIFYING ENLIGHTENMENT

Depending on your DNA and other factors, the ideal number of steps, hours of sleep, hours of reading, vitamin D, calories consumed, water drunk, etc. will be counted each day. But more than just “fitbit style.”

It will be all agreed that competition breeds the best results so the results would be public and ranked by various health metrics so all could see who is healthier than whom. Dating apps will be set up to match those with similar health. USBucks will be mined by those in peak health at the end of each month.

Soon other factors of mental well-being will be measured and gamified as above — including the correct amount of dopamine uptake each day, serotonin, oxytocin (perhaps measuring sex?), and then meditation skills would be demonstrated on how quickly each spike in cortisol subsides into endorphins.

This will be ranked each month, with the winners earning the rank of “Buddha” and more USBucks mined. 

People who have higher levels of cortisol may be taxed because of surplus cortisol levels, incentivizing people to reduce stress or not engage in revolutionary activities.

The best will happen and the worst will happen. Bandwidth and storage will be 100% commoditized.

The world will adapt to crypto because of financial collapse caused by a collapse in debt as well as a collapse in politics.

Boundaries will shift and countries will turn upside down. Fascism and laissez-faire attitudes will interweave depending on which state one is in, and the panacea of 3D genomics, VR, acommerce, crypto will be everyday parts of society we can’t imagine living without. 

Some people will choose to permanently live in VRs while machines keep their muscles from atrophying. Their “geographic footprint” will decrease, allowing for more people to inhabit the planet. Millions of artificial worlds will be created to handle the overwhelming geographic footprints of society.

Will it be a better world? I have no idea. Time will tell.

The post My Predictions for the Year 2084 appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/3bGnjsZ via website design phoenix

Why I Said NYC Is Dead Forever…

I want to put to rest all of the controversy around my recent article “NYC Is Dead Forever… Here’s Why.”

Two weeks ago, I wrote a viral essay on LinkedIn, which said that due to the coronavirus’s devastating effect on the city, NYC as we know it is dead, forever. A few days later, I woke up to find that the piece had received intense criticism from the likes of Jerry Seinfeld (who penned an op-ed against me in The New York Times), Mark Cuban, and even the mayor himself, Bill DeBlasio—as well as millions of others.

While I included lots of factual data to back up my proclamation, outlining everything from the city’s current real estate crisis to a rise in unemployment and loss of culture, many were quick to assume I merely had given up on New York City altogether.

This is far from the truth! 

Watch this 6-minute video to learn more about why I wrote this piece, what that crazy experience was like, and what I believe needs to happen to save the city I assure you I love so dearly.

Big thanks to Gary Vaynerchuk for his advice and help on this video. 

Also, I released this podcast today…

Eric Adams, Brooklyn Borough president and candidate for NYC mayor comes on and we talk about possible solutions. 

Eric is an old friend and we were able to talk freely and I was very direct in my questions.

You can check it out here.

The post Why I Said NYC Is Dead Forever… appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/2F4bOiY via website design phoenix

[Editor’s note: As many of you might have heard by now, I accidentally pissed off Jerry Seinfeld earlier this week… Well, I recently came across this article about the subject. This is being reprinted from Matt Tillotson’s excellent blog. An unfortunate and painful but also unusual writing lesson. Painful for me, I have to say, but fun to read.

Check out the full article in today’s issue of The Altucher Report! If you’re not already a subscriber, click here for more information.]

Jerry vs. James: Avoid These Writing Mistakes and Persuade Like a Pro

By Matt Tillotson 

Writing prowess — and writing mistakes — were on full display in the recent kerfuffle between Jerry Seinfeld and James Altucher over New York City.

Altucher’s persuasive copywriting chops shine through in two vibrant and persuasive essays. He stoked attention and emotion with colorful analogies, insightful data, and relevant personal experiences. 

Seinfeld responded. Did his punches land? 

This is the story of a PWKO: a persuasive writing knockout. 

Important disclaimer: This piece is about writing persuasively and effectively. I’m not here offer any crystal-gazing about Gotham’s future. I love NYC and am rooting for it. 

Now, let’s get ready to rumble. 

Round One: The First Volley 

James Altucher started the fight with an essay entitled “NYC is Dead Forever … Here’s Why.” Let’s take a look at the jabs and haymakers Altucher uses to create an essay that garners attention and generates strong reactions. 

The Bold Open 

Altucher often writes to incite raw emotion. He stakes out clear and bold positions that half his readers will hate, such as:

•   Is college a scam?
•   It’s financial suicide to buy a house

When Altucher writes, he doesn’t hedge his bets. Per his usual strategy, the headline for his NYC essay swirls together controversy and mystery. 

The use of “forever” in the headline is critical. Everyone knows NYC is empty right now. The streets are largely dead. “Forever” throttles up emotion and creates a bold position. The essay wouldn’t have been nearly as controversial without that single word. 

Open boldly and make every word count. 

Acknowledge and Address Skepticism 

When you make a bold claim in a headline, you must quickly address skepticism or the reader will dismiss your position and check out. Altucher wastes no time:

“But NYC always always bounces back.” No. Not this time.

“But NYC is the center of the financial universe. Opportunities will flourish here again.” Not this time. 

“NYC has experienced worse.” No it hasn’t.

Later, Altucher shares stats that further break down resistance: 

A Facebook group formed a few weeks ago that was for people who were planning a move and wanted others to talk to and ask advice from. Within two or three days it had about 10,000 members. 

Altucher then acknowledges the three most important reasons to move to NYC, and dismantles all of them:

•   Business opportunities
•   Culture 
•   Food

He uses detail, anecdotes, and observations to pick apart the points of resistance to his argument. Altucher makes his case, in large part, by refuting the skeptics. 

If you open boldly, get right to work addressing the counterpoints.

For the full article, read this week’s issue of The Altucher Report.

The post Jerry vs. James: Avoid These Writing Mistakes and Persuade Like a Pro appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/2QvZlXO via website design phoenix

The Trick to Finding Rental Discounts in NYC

It’s not easy. But they are there. Up to 50% or more.

For several years I lived just in Airbnbs. I lived in every neighborhood of NYC. I would live for a few days or a month or a few months.

I owned no furniture. And I was probably depressed.

I didn’t want to settle down in one place. I didn’t want to have anything that was “mine.”

Then I had to get an apartment. There was an area I wanted to live but no Airbnbs were available.

That was then. Things have changed.

When you see a news headline like, “Apartment Vacancies at All-Time High!” it doesn’t mean you’ll automatically find a great deal today.

If you are just looking for yearly rentals on a real estate site, you won’t find discounts.

How come?

Landlords will work out discounts on the side like, “Get three months free but sign the lease for no discount on the rent.” In other words, 25% off.

Why would they do this?

They don’t want to be stuck with a discount to rent if there’s an eviction moratorium. They don’t want to show the data of a discount the next time they put it up for rent. Or for sale. Who knows?

Also, not every vacancy is for rent. If a building has five vacancies maybe they’ll only put up one of those vacancies. They don’t want renters to realize how many people have left the building.

Solution:

Airbnb. There’s no BS. The 400,000 people who have left NYC since March NEED to rent their places out.

They will slash and cut and kill until they rent out. And nobody will ever know.

I did a random search on just any place in NYC. This was on the first or second page of results. I’ve never seen anything like it.

What does this mean for the future? I don’t know. I don’t want Jerry Seinfeld to yell at me again.

The post The Trick to Finding Rental Discounts in NYC appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/3hKibXn via website design phoenix

Sorry Seinfeld: Your Love of NYC Won’t Change the Facts About Its Crisis

This article originally ran in the opinion section of The New York Post.

---

I’ve gotten more death threats in the past week than probably the average politician does — all because I wrote a column for The Post with the online headline “NYC Is Dead Forever: Here’s Why.” I presented facts. Plus, I told the story of my own lifelong love affair with the Big Apple and lamented its impending demise.

Now Jerry Seinfeld — sitting in the comfort and safety of his Hamptons mansion, with probably five dozen rare Italian sports cars in the garage — has written a response in the New York Times calling me a “putz” and insisting that “NYC has resilience.”

My mother agrees with him.

I appreciate that Seinfeld is also concerned enough about the city to write a rebuttal. But there’s denial, and there’s reality. Denial won’t help anything. Failing to address problems won’t save Gotham.

We all get it. New York has “grit.” I lived three blocks from Ground Zero on 9/11. I lived on Wall Street during the financial crisis and Great Recession. I was optimistic then. But let’s look at the facts — again:

• Apartment vacancies are at an all-time high right now. That’s 13,117 vacancies. This number will rise: 1 in 4 residents haven’t paid rent since March.
• Deficits are at all-time highs. The city is drowning in $9 billion of red ink — $1 billion more than expected. And tax revenues will see their steepest decline in city history.
• More companies are leaving New York than ever before. They aren’t leaving because I wrote an article, but because corporations are serious about reality. Citi. JPMorgan. Google. And hundreds of other large companies. All either leaving or going remote.

Why can they go so easily? Because for the first time in history, internet bandwidth allows all or nearly all white-collar ­employees to work remotely. Back in 2008, average bandwidth was 2.5 megabits per second (not enough for video). Now it’s more like 30 megabits per second (more than enough for video).

Does this mean people like ­remote work? No. But most studies agree: Remote is more productive. Again, this isn’t my conjecture. Thousands of firms that make up New York’s tax base have concluded so.

The knock-on effects, combined with those from the needlessly protracted lockdown, are devastating.

Thousands of restaurants have shuttered their doors permanently. Yelp has said up to 50% of the restaurants it tracks are out of business. A study by Partnership for New York City found that up to one-third of Gotham’s 240,000 small businesses may never reopen.

What does this mean? It means more revenue declines and even higher deficits. It means the choking death of the tourism industry. It means eerily empty office buildings.

We are just beginning to see the beginning. The beginning! A city spokesperson said that up to 22,000 layoff notices will go out August 31. These layoffs will hit emergency workers (who risked their lives at the height of the pandemic), garbage collectors, teachers and police officers. That last group’s loss will be ­especially tragic, given the 130% increase in shootings this year.

A city can’t survive blows like this.

Nobody wants this. I don’t want it. Seinfeld doesn’t want it, though he doesn’t exactly suffer.

It’s working-class people who will bear the brunt: the dry cleaners, the deli sandwich virtuosos, the retail workers. Seinfeld and others imagine that “grit” and “resilience” are all it takes. Magical thinking is such a wonderful thing.

Let’s focus on solutions.

One solution would be a massive bailout, but that requires political will in Washington that may never materialize. Barring that, the city must create massive economic incentives for existing companies to stay and new ones to move to New York and hire people — starting by removing the massive disincentive of a prolonged lockdown. The forces of law and order mustn’t be made an enemy of.

Otherwise, New York’s (and other large cities’) opportunities will disperse throughout the rest of the country. If urban areas stay on their current trajectory, young people will find other places to flourish without having to move to cities. Gotham would lose its greatest engine of prosperity and dynamism: people.

The city we love needs help. I don’t care that Seinfeld insults me in another paper. Hey, for all the grimness of the moment, at least I inspired a once-great ­comedian to finally write some new jokes. By the way, my local business, StandupNY, is doing 50 free shows in Central Park this week. You’re welcome to perform, Jerry, but I don’t think you’re in town.

The post Sorry Seinfeld: Your Love of NYC Won’t Change the Facts About Its Crisis appeared first on James Altucher.

from James Altucher https://ift.tt/3hyhjos via website design phoenix