As a visitor, you quickly realise that New York City is unsentimental. New Yorkers are always looking forward.
It’s in the nature of Wall Street. No wonder the Occupy movement started here in downtown Manhattan, the financial district.
As in all other US cities, there is a dramatic contrast between rich and poor, a Third World within the First World.
Yet only 17% of the population thinks this is a problem: most have bought the American Dream that perhaps next year they too will become millionaires. But for many of the poor, it will remain bleak.