City Journal Audio

John Tierney joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss what the debate over prescription drugs gets wrong and the cost that government-imposed price controls could have on one of the world's most innovative industries. The business practices of the pharmaceutical industry--or "Big Pharma"—are one of the most divisive political issues of our time. Leaders from both political parties, from Bernie Sanders to President Trump, regularly denounce drug companies for profiteering and call for lower drug prices. But as Tierney notes in City Journal, "of every dollar that Americans spend on health, only a dime goes for prescription drugs. The lion's share of health spending goes to hospitals and people in the health-care professions." America has been called the "Pharmacy to the World" because it's where more than half of new drugs get developed and tested in clinical trials. Patients in Europe and elsewhere enjoy the benefits of these breakthrough drugs. Price controls in the U.S. would significantly curtail new research and development projects--resulting in a net loss for everyone.

Nicole Gelinas joins Seth Barron to discuss the chaos that commuters and tourists endure on a daily basis in midtown Manhattan—especially during the holiday season. Every year, city officials are criticized for their poor handling of holiday crowds and the traffic that fills the streets. This year promises to be even worse. As Gelinas has documented, tourists visiting the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center are being funneled between police barricades and concrete bollards, while cars move freely down the wide avenues. Traffic in midtown has gotten measurably worse in recent years, even as tourism has reached record-highs. The city is considering proposals to close midtown streets to vehicles during the holidays, but officials will have to be more creative to solve a problem that grows more unmanageable every year.

Stephen Eide joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss how America's health-care system fails the mentally ill, and the steps that cities and states are taking to keep the mentally ill out of jail and get them into treatment. Urban areas have seen a disturbing rise in street disorder and homelessness over the last decade. Unfortunately, many of the street homeless suffer from serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Despite federalspending of about $150 billion annually on mental illness programs, individuals with the most severe diagnoses areoften thrown into a repeating cycle of jail stays, homelessness, and hospitalizations. In response, many states and cities are developing their own methods to keep the severely mentally ill out of jail.Launched in 2000, Miami-Dade County's Criminal Mental Health Project is one of the nation's most admired and successful of these programs.

Oren Cass joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss his new book, The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America. The American worker is in crisis. Wages have stagnated for more than a generation, and reliance on welfare programs has surged. Life expectancy is falling as substance abuse and obesity rates climb. Work and its future has become a central topic for City Journal: in 2017, the magazine published its special issue, The Shape of Work to Come. Cass's book is a groundbreaking reevaluation of American social and economic policy. The renewal of work in America will require fresh solutions; Yuval Levin of National Affairs calls The Once and Future Worker "the essential policy book of our time."

Nicole Gelinas joins Howard Husock to discuss the resolution of Amazon's year-long "HQ2" competition. This week, the Internet giant announced that it would open new offices in Crystal City, Virginia—near Washington, D.C.—and New York's own Long Island City, Queens. Located just across the East River from midtown Manhattan, Long Island City had struggled for years as a post-industrial neighborhood until the early 2000s, when rezoning allowed the construction of dozens of luxury residential buildings and modern office towers. The neighborhood still faces challenges, however: it's home to some of the city's largest public housing projects, and its schools are poorly run. New York State is offering Amazon more than $1.5 billion in tax breaks and grants to create 25,000 jobs in Long Island City. That comes out to about $48,000 per job. Since the announcement, community leaders and elected officials are already making demands on Amazon. They want to see funding for transit fixes, employment for local residents, unionization, and more. As more details emerge on the terms of the city and state's agreement with the company (one example: Amazon's private helipad will be limited to 120 landings a year), many New Yorkers are skeptical.

Steven Malanga joins Aaron Renn to discuss the results of this week's gubernatorial elections. States such as Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin flipped blue after eight years of GOP governance. In highly publicized races in Florida and Georgia and heavily blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts, Republicans prevailed. All told, Democrats gained seven governorships. Ten years ago, Democrats won a host of governorships during President Obama's first election, and 2009 proved be a record year for state tax hikes. A decade later, state tax revenues have still not recovered to their pre-recession levels, and costs are rising (especially for state Medicaid programs). But if history is any guide, tax hikes and spending increases will be on the agenda after years of comparative taxing discipline.​ Read Malanga's story at City Journal about the gubernatorial elections, "A Tax-and-Spend Revival in the States?"

City Journal's Brian Anderson and Seth Barron discuss New York's upcoming elections and the prospects of a state government run entirely by Democrats. New York's local politics have long been driven by a partisan split in the state legislature. With the help of moderate Democrats, Republicans have held a narrow majority in the state senate since 2010. This year, however, many of those moderates were beaten in the primaries by more progressive candidates. As a result, Democrats are poised to take over state government in Albany next year. Democrats in the legislature will likely pass a progressive-policy wish list: a millionaires' tax, rent control, single-payer health care, and more. Governor Andrew Cuomo, however, who appears certain to win a third term, is the wild card. It remains to be seen how Cuomo will react to aggressive leftward pressure from his party.

Oriana Schwindt joins City Journal contributing editor Aaron Renn to discuss Schwindt's seven-month-long journey to municipalities near the geographic center of every U.S. state, and what she found there: the curious "sameness" of American cities. Schwindt chronicled her travels in a recent article for New York. In gentrifying neighborhoods across the country, visitors are practically guaranteed to find high-end bars with expensive cocktails, coffee shops with tattooed and bespectacled baristas, new luxury housing in all-glass buildings, and maybe an Asian-fusion restaurant. "The reason so many of these joints feel harvested from Brooklyn," Schwindt writes, "is because they are." While urban aesthetics are important, coffee shops and micro-breweries are no replacement for serious infrastructure investment and economic development.

Andy Ngo joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the recent outbreak of violence in Portland between far-left activists, commonly referred to as Antifa, and right-wing groups that gathered to oppose them. Pacific Northwest cities like Portland and Seattle have long been hotbeds for extreme left-wing political movements. Recently, video emerged of black-clad Antifa activists directing midday traffic and harassing drivers in Portland's business district. A week later, street brawls broke out after an Oregon-based right-wing group called Patriot Prayer held a march in downtown Portland, purportedly in protest of the mayor's oversight of the police and leniency with far-left activists. Political violence may be spreading to other cities: this past weekend, Antifa brawled with members of the Proud Boys in New York. Andy Ngo is an editor at Quillette and a writer whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, The American Spectator, and City Journal.

City Journal contributing editor Howard Husock is joined in the studio by Shelby Steele to discuss the state of race relations in American society, the history of black protest movements, and other subjects. Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, specializing in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. His books include The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (1990), which won the National Book Critic's Circle Award; White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (2006); and Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country (2015). He has been honored with the Bradley Prize and the National Humanities Medal, and his work on the 1991 documentary Seven Days in Bensonhurst was recognized with an Emmy Award. Read Steele's latest essay for the Wall Street Journal, "Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate."