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“The Dream-Life Calculator,” May 22–June 4
For New York’s latest cover story, the magazine asked young New Yorkers to describe what they wanted their future lives to look like. Then our reporters figured out, down to the dollar, how much it would all cost. The novelist Min Jin Lee tweeted, “I found this dollars and cents breakdown fascinating, absurd, and instructive.” The New York Post’s Nolan Hicks said, “Brilliantly done, positively enraging and a pretty good explanation of why folks are forced to look to NJ or beyond.” The Christian-democratic American Solidarity Party wrote on Twitter, “The idea that it’s normal for huge swaths of our major cities to be largely out of reach for families (even relatively privileged ones) is a recent innovation … Housing matters to us all, but it especially impacts people looking to start families — contrary to stereotypes, that includes folks in the Big City too.” And Kevin Walsh, author of Forgotten New York, said, “How about an article on NYC living on $45,000 or less per annum? I’ve done it for over 40 years and I live modestly but not uncomfortably.” Online, we asked readers to tell us what they thought of our calculations in the comments. Some weighed in on how realistic the imagined lives were. For Aliya in Brooklyn Heights, quite a few readers seemed to think that, with three children, her monthly trips were unlikely. “Not even a money issue — the world’s best cat-herder could never arrange 6 girls’ trips per year!” jennitrixie said. Mopar added, “Corporate lawyers don’t have time to live this dream life.” Of Chen’s life with her in-laws in Queens, llama commented, “this felt pretty comparable to my life with 2 kids and no pets in a multigenerational household. the ‘Wegmans-Costco-Target circuit’ made me laugh out loud. who knew toddlers eat so many damn berries?!” Others noted specific costs we didn’t take into account. For Charlotte in Park Slope, one person wrote, “Good but it’d likely cost more — teens are expensive, add in a cell phone (which will likely break and need repairs).” Of Tarek in Bed-Stuy: “It will cost you more than $300 to park a Chevy Volt as it’s an electric hybrid.” And for Audrey’s children on the Upper East Side: “The author also overlooked the high cost of child enrichment programs, tutoring and summer camps/summer schools. That runs about $20,000-30,000 a year per child for wealthy families in NYC.” After reading our tally, Rachel, the theater agent whose dream of living in Westchester was featured in the online version of the story, told us, “My boyfriend is a little more convinced we should move to Delaware now —especially after seeing how much pest control costs up here!”
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“ ‘I Want the Bloody Hands Recorded’ ”
Lila Shapiro chronicled Nebraska lawmaker Machaela Cavanaugh’s two-month-long filibuster of a bill, LB 574, that bans minors from seeking “gender-altering procedures.” Run for Something’s Amanda Litman said, “I want every Democrat to show the kind of backbone & rage as the legislators in Nebraska showed this year … they get the stakes & see the opposition clearly for who they are.” Nebraska attorney Ann Ashford wrote, “An accurate and chilling account … It is incredibly sad when legislators do not educate themselves. Actually unforgivable.” Cavanaugh’s colleagues in the Nebraska legislature, including some who appeared in the feature, also praised the story. Senator John Fredrickson wrote, “To say my first year in the #NELeg has been a rollercoaster would be an understatement. Grateful to strong journalism to document this harrowing time in history.” And Senator Megan Hunt added, “Machaela Cavanaugh is the greatest of all time. In awe of her every day.”
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In Other News:
In “13,000 Pounds at 118 Miles Per Hour” (January 17–30, 2022), Ben Ryder Howe investigated the circumstances that led to the 2018 Schoharie limo crash that killed 20 people. Late last month, Nauman Hussain, the operator of the limo company, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.
For Intelligencer, Jen Wieczner exposed problems at Daylight, an LGBTQ+ finance start-up (“The Meltdown of a Gay Bank,” March 31). Less than two months after her investigation, the company announced it was shutting down.
From houseguests to camp to vacation disasters, summer is full of etiquette land mines. Starting June 5, the team behind New York’s “Do You Know How to Behave?” issue (January 30–February 10) will answer your questions in a limited-edition advice newsletter. Subscribers can sign up or submit their own quandaries at nymag.com/summer-helpline.
Send correspondence to [email protected]. Or go to nymag.com to respond to individual stories.