Business Leaders, Lead. Your City Needs You.

By Erica and Karen

We live in New York City, where every day we bravely go forth amidst the anarchy of street side restaurants and masked citizens. Many of us are doing what we can to bring our city back to life. (We are excellent shoppers.) But our business leaders need to step up.

We wholeheartedly support the letter sent by many of you to our mayor. It is time for action—indeed way past time. But we respectfully suggest that you, the business leaders, need to formulate a plan yourselves. Right now. Waiting for the Mayor to do something useful is not going to work. Just ask public school principals.

Business needs to commit resources toward an immediate safe return to the office. The City will not recover until that happens. Yes, that will be hard, especially as the lack of a national plan has resulted in a surge of coronavirus infections just as winter is on the way. But you are a bunch of can-do leaders. Spend some capital on at least these initiatives:

• rapid testing, and

• protective gear, and

• a public transit strategy, and

• a public school strategy too.

Just as we all had to make our own masks in the beginning, even though it is 2020 in the United States of America, you need to make your own plan now. (If it can be done in Rome and Newark it can be done in every city with a robust business community.)

Yes, you will have to make a big investment at a time when that may seem risky. But that investment will surely be tiny compared the continued losses, both financial and human, if you just sit back and wait. You know people work better when they spend at least some time in the office. The faster you fix this, the faster we all get back to normal.

Get our national leaders to function, too. We can’t let partisan gridlock kill our city—and all the other cities in America. Jay Powell and Robert Mnuchin agree that grants to small business are required to keep the national economy from crashing. Look at the small business big picture. Landlords need rent, but tenants can’t pay. Workers need jobs but employers can’t pay either. Because your teams are not in the office all the small businesses that serve them are failing. The City has been impoverished by the failure to deploy national resources. The only way out is for business to lead, and to push our national leaders to lead as well. Business leaders, tell our politicians to get on it. And to get off the idea that cutting further federal funds will benefit the City or the nation.

We grew up assuming that government was here to protect us. We have paid taxes for decades (exponentially more than $750 per year). You probably did too. We expected the government to use those taxes to implement a plan to repel any external attack on the country. That is a fair assumption, but it has been proven outdated.

So, business leaders, it’s up to you. Please, use your superpowers to save us all. And remember, we retirees are here to help. Our superpowers remain intact too.