Manhattan NYC, people don't even know what hit them

[skipster]

In skipster's world, nobody gives up nothin' (not even the time of day) unless it's for money or someone is holding a gun to your head.

In my world (the REAl world), you are not FORCED to do anything. No one is even forcing you to breathe -- you can find a way to stop if you really want to. Even if someone is holding a gun to your head, you can still say no. The results may not be desirable, but you can still say no.

The bottom line is that someone can not be FORCED to do something. OF course, the consequences of not doing it may not be fun, but that choice can still be made. Don't confuse undesirable outcomes with impossibility. This is not an easy idea for some people to understand. I will help you through it.

[Big]

And yet when someone forces you the results are better than when you are free to decide.

[skipster]

WHAT?? Are you on crack?!

When someone "forces" you to live in a way you don't like, the results are better than when you decide on your own how you would like to live?

You're right. I don't know what I was thinking.

[Big]

Exactly!

My grandmother maybe didn’t like to share a kitchen, with other people, living in the center of Leningrad but the government said she had no other way.

But, we look at Manhattan and old ladies can’t even afford to live there and many people live in smaller rooms than grandmother’s.

[Big]

Read and wheep skipster! Your freedom loving environment treats people like pigs.

Like the legions of aspiring poets, tap dancers and musicians who came before her, Nina Rubin, a 29-year-old graduate of Wesleyan University, has struggled to find halfway decent housing in New York. Earlier this year, she ended up in her most unusual home yet: an office.

After taking a job as an instructor at Outward Bound, Ms. Rubin, along with some of her co-workers, settled into the top floor of the organization?s Long Island City headquarters. She camped out in a bunk bed; others converted nearby office cubicles into sleeping spaces, or pitched tents on the building?s roof. To create some privacy, they hung towels and sheets around their bunks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/ny...S8WX1XyciHK/hA

[RYou]

Manhattan is a place where the majority of people live in tiny apartments with 2 or 3 roommates that they are forced to have.

You don't know what it's like to have fun.

[RYou]

You can get three times the space outside the 5 boros, 5 times the space away from the city.

The government is suppporting these folks and I'm sure you're grandmaw too. That income will not change no matter wher you live...move. Go where the cost of living is lower.

[Schlottke]

You actually make a decent point about the room sizes, Big, but I'd have to say the standard of living is better in NYC than it is in Leningrad. (I never lived there, but I've been there.) I'd pick a small apartment w/ 2 other people I barely knew than living in a foreign country where I couldn't speak the language.

[oc]

Actually the problem with the New York realty market is rent control. Imposed during WWII to "help control the housing market" it was never repealed. All kind of nightmare stories, apartments passed on to children and the rent frozen at WWII levels, properties sold and the new owner not being able to move in (can't evict renters), it's a mess.