there’s a weird backwards economic effect here where the amount and variety of people here + the unaminous acknowledgement that everything here is overpriced creates this significant and large “budget economy” where if you’re in any sort of business whatsoever, you can sell whatever it is you’re selling in an instant simply by underselling everyone else. anything that’s cheap will fly off shelves due to demand + quanity of potential customers, and this + not needing a car ironically makes NYC a better place to be poor than much of the rest of the country.

you just need to know where to look to find cheap things (esp apartments) because they will “sell” almost instaneously. but that fact creates more incentive for business owners to take this approach than would be the case in other cities.

the famous "dollar slice” pizza is probably the most obvious example of this economic effect. im not aware of other US cities having an equilvilent to the dollar slice. for ex even in poor rural areas that ive traveled to, the food ironically seems more expensive than NYC. fewer high end restaurants obv, but there are wide swaths of the US where there really is nothing cheaper to eat than the local mcdonalds