‘The Road to Serfdom’

Re: “The Road to Serfdom,” Myron Magnet, Opinion, February 16, 2005. Mr. Magnet makes a worthwhile point.

On Saturday morning (the first day that the gates were all unfurled) I went for a walk in the park. Because of a gusty wind a number of the fabric “drapes” had been flipped over the Gates and hung at odd angles. I thought this a delightful demonstration of entropy and the power of nature to randomize the Christo’s otherwise identical army of marching imperial guards. By the end of the two weeks, I thought, all the Gates would be uniquely different; like every tree, an individual.

But no! A troop of Christo’s oxymoronic “paid volunteers” (aren’t we all?) was scurrying about with long-handled telescoping poles, struggling to undo nature’s work. I suggested they might allow the wind to play, and see how pleasing the result would be. “Christo does not want this to happen,” they replied. Nature must not be allowed to intervene in Central Park.

BARRY MILLIKEN
Manhattan

‘A Low Point Is Hit’

Re: “A Low Point Is Hit by City Council,” Andrew Wolf, Opinion, February 11, 2005. In Mr. Wolf’s column on the defeat of an application to build a BJ’s Wholesale Club in the Bronx, Mr. Wolf assumes that the City Council’s Land Use Committee voted against this project only because BJ’s is virulently anti-labor. This clearly is not so and does an injustice to Land Use Chairwoman Melinda Katz and her entire committee.

The fact is that opponents spent tens of thousands of dollars on a traffic analysis. It demonstrated that, once again, a developer was putting out self-serving information that drastically underestimated the traffic impact on the community.

In addition, unlike the developer, opponents presented a 30-page economic impact analysis that, by speaking to the project’s socioeconomic effects and neighborhood impact, went to the heart of the criteria that make up the land-use review.

Mr. Wolf chastises the council for looking at labor issues that he believes should be outside the purview of a land-use review. He then goes on to argue that the project should be approved because of the high unemployment in Bronx County, an issue not germane to any land-use review criteria.

The entry of box stores in New York City needs the most rigorous review possible. An in-depth analysis of the costs of these stores as well as their putative benefits needs to be undertaken, one that is not done under the aegis of self-serving developers.

RICHARD LIPSKY
Mr. Lipsky is a lobbyist for the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, which opposed this project.
Flushing, N.Y.

‘Mideast Parley Takes Ugly Turn’

Re: “Mid East Parley Takes Ugly Turn,” Jesse Larner, Letters, February 7, 2005. After centuries of murder and despoliation that Jews have endured from time immemorial at the hands of non-Jews, they are entitled to a “Jewish state,” the homeland from which they were expelled in Roman times, and now restored by blood and tears, where they are secure to defend themselves. Forget the biblical justification if you must. A single state for Jews and Palestinians (who hate them) is truly preposterous.

What kind of Arab is going to sing the Jewish national anthem, “Hatikvah,” or salute the Shield of David? Get real. Non-Jews may have a right to live in Israel, but Jews must control their nation, whether a world which ignored genocide approves, or not.

JEROME L. STARR
Manhattan

‘Social Security Changes’

The dialogue about Social Security continues on the same authoritarian path built 70 years ago [“Social Security Changes Depend On Public Support,” Siobhan McDonough, National, February 14, 2005]. The assumptions then, and never challenged since, were that Social Security (1) needs to be universal and (2) is reliably designed through economic projections so that it is rational. Seventy years of failed econometric predictions suggest that this is wrong. Investing based on Democrats’ predictions about demographic trends is a “Deadwood”-style crapshoot.

Why shouldn’t Social Security be voluntary? Those who trust the Democratic Party’s economic forecasters can be free to invest and enjoy or suffer the consequences. But why do liberals feel it is necessary to compel those of us who see our contributions as having higher opportunity costs to invest in their losing proposition?

MITCHELL LANGBERT
Associate professor of economics
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn

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