New York City is the most influential city in the world

I’d like to rebut his responses one at a time. 1) ‘First, we can see that NYC is not doing as well as my opponent would like to believe. The unemployment rate is steadily rising, while the national is on a downward trend [1]. Since Feb 2010, the US has created over 4.6 million private sector jobs [2], while NYC, in that same time has lost almost 60,000 jobs [1]. Meanwhile, tied to both the jobs and the economy in general, banks, as well as other businesses, are fleeing NYC for better places’ Here my opponent assumes that just because NYC is going through tough economic times, that it somehow lessens its economic might. If the things he pointed out really were hindering NYC’s influence and economy to a great deal, it would show up in the global city rankings and its GDP. It’s not fair to point at all the things that could make a city less influential as evidence for that the city is less influential. It would be like saying ‘that student never studies for his tests, so he fails’ even when the student was getting consistent A’s. The fact that NYC has retained its global economic and cultural influence given its recession shows how powerful it was to begin with. And because it has not lost this influence, it is fair to assume that it hasn’t lost it. 2) ‘NYC has never made it past the first round of the final bid to get any Olympic event. The closest they got was for the 2012 summer [4], while several other US cities have hosted the Olympics. ’ - This argument is a non sequitur. The bid for the olympics has nothing to do with the city’s influence and or power. St. Louis has hosted the olympics; are you saying that St. Louis is more powerful and influential than NYC? Because it’s apparent that it is not, this can not be used to show anything about a city’s influence and power. 3) ‘This also has two major flaws. First, is that Americans are typically not that big on immigration [5] as we have always been fairly dissatisfied with the current level of immigration. Second, we can trace everyone back to Africa, but that does not mean that Africa has a lot of influence. Simply being a check-in point does not grant NYC any real influence. ’ Regardless if Americans are ‘big on immigration’, immigration has still made a huge impact on America. Americans ARE immigrants. You talk about how everyone is from Africa as an argument against influence of roots. I find your example to work in my favor, actually. Every race can trace its roots back to Africa, and thus, they’re the embodiment of this influence. 4) ‘We can show several cases of cities being more influential, but I shall focus only on one, the Vatican City [6]. While this is one of the smallest "cities" in the world, its influence spans the entire globe. Being a religious center for one of the most prominent religions in the world, it is not hard to see how it can directly and indirectly influence so many. And while it does not have a powerful economy, it does have a loyalty and dedication that companies will never hold, which allows its influence to cover those very companies which claim to have such a powerful influence with NYC. Articles from wikileaks show just how wide and how deep the influence of this city can go [7]. Vatican City currently has diplomats in 178 countries, second in the world behind only the US (despite having 1/400,000 the population). They effect elections all over the world and even down to state governments. They are an organization that is nothing other than influence. ’ You have failed to show how the Vatican City is more influential than NYC. All cities have some influence, so this argument means nothing. The Vatican City doesn’t influence the World to a high degree. It’s home to the pope, but that’s about it. The pope is not more influential than an entire city. He does not make many decisions and most of the Globe is never actually influenced by him. This goes for all religious cities; they rarely actually do anything except be holy. 5) ‘If we try to compare the two side by side, there is no comparison. If we talk about GDP and money flow, sure, NYC puts up some intense numbers, but when it comes down to influence (as this debate is about), NYC doesn't come close. Other cities, such as Mecca, Jerusalem, and Washington DC all hold more global influence than NYC. ’ GDP and money flow are ridiculously important to a city’s influence. You are axiomatically saying money isn’t important and political and religious power is without providing any evidence. If these cities really were the most influential cities in the World, they’d be ranked as such on ANY of the indexes done. They have not. All of said cities have great local influence, sure, but when it comes to where the real influence is, the World, they do not directly influence very much. In conclusion, my opponent made weak attempts at proving New York City isn’t powerful by pointing out its economic troubles without actually addressing the fact that it’s still extremely economically powerful and ranked as such. My opponent made no valid alternatives to the World’s most influential city besides listing a few religious cities and DC and never expanding on them. New York City is the most influential city in the world because it has a great reach to the world economy. It has been ranked #1 on a myriad of indexes ranking city’s global power, economic power, and culture influence.