Anyone who says something like this is either clueless about nyc aside from the myths or is trying desperately to portray an image. Costs in NYC are not exorbitant unless you want to make them that way. Single people can live OK & enjoy life on 50k/year. 100k/year is still a nice salary in NYC, even for a husband supporting the wife and child. Plenty of people do it. 300k-400k for physical labor is an enormous salary and there is NOTHING about being a stagehand that is unique in any way, shape or form from many other jobs in NYC, let alone the world. It is a specialized occupation so I could see 100k-200k/year for these guys as they are lifers, but past that is simply absurd. I wonder why the halls deal with this nonsense, especially in times like these.
1) It can be easy to agree to the union's demands especially considering that the activity they're involved with is generally supported by wealthy people who can afford "high" ticket prices that can be written off as a business expense. That's their "edge". They're operating at the high-end of the market, not in the mass-market. 2) According to the article, there's a rather "finite" number of people earning those outsized salaries and benefits. Also, the musicians themselves don't want to "make waves" with the laborers.
Give me a break, you should look in the mirror before calling other clueless. A small 1br rent cost $2000 in nyc. If you are single making 50k a year, your take home pay is 33k at best. On top of paying for transportation, food etc.. The only way to live in nyc with that salary is to share with roommate. If you call that OK living and enjoy life, then i guess we do have different living standard. And if you own instead of rent, it's much more expensive due to the added property tax / condo fees you have to pay on top of mortgage. The only people living there comfortably making ~100k are those who brought cheap back in the 80s/90s and owns the property outright. So no rent/mortgage to pay, just living costs. You need to make at least 250k+ minimum (~160k after tax) now for a family to live in nyc comfortably in a decent sized 2br without going paycheck to paycheck. You are delusional if you think otherwise.
If they built the places using good planning in the first place, they could probably get robotics along with computers to do all of that work.
I paid $3400/month in Battery park in 2000, which was the cheapest 2-bed apart I could find there/then. The rent dropped 30% after 9/11.
Just so you know, a very similar article was written in 2008 or so. Carnegie Hall is losing money. So it's far from a write-off, it's a straight up loss.
Contrary to your closeminded opinion, NYC is not overpopulated with trust fund babies & hedge fund managers. It's mostly 20-something, 30-something singles, most of which do live with roommates and some actually prefer it, unlike your antisocial stuck up self. These people party, and party a lot for a minimal cost. The nightlife & party life in NYC is near impossible to replicate in the "cheaper to live" areas. Hence why people choose to live here with roommates in small apartments, the social plusses are too high to ignore. If you're making 50k, you're not going to get a 1 bedroom for $2k. You will either get a roommate, go for a studio or live more uptown/brooklyn/queens. Simple as that. Nothing in this city requires you to spend like whale to enjoy it. As for owning in NYC, unless you like wasting money and can afford to, it's just a bad deal. Taxes + maintenance + restrictions, it's not worth it.
Living with a roommate no matter how old you are and not owning a car is a firsthand sign of low life style and extremely unamerican.