Man, if this trend plays itself out, I'm gonna miss my knishes, blintzes, latkes, matzo soup and pastrami on rye

Two recent pieces - one by Austin Hill at Townhall, and one by Neo-neocon at her blog - that are responses to a recent LA Times piece on the demise of the Jewish deli.  There used to be thousands in New York, and now that's down to a couple of hundred.

Neo-neocon's main point is that delis have had an authenticity problem for some time.  She says that the dough for their bagels and rye bread had undergone a decrease in chewiness, for example.

Austin Hill raises some interesting points.  He doesn't mention Joseph Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction, but he's clearly addressing it:

Consider, for example, the notion of “too much competition.” What exactly does this mean?

Obviously the more competitive a marketplace is, the more difficult it is for any particular business entity to survive and thrive. But how do we know when the level of competition is appropriate, and when it is “too much?”

Americans are accustomed to fierce competition in other arenas – in sports, especially, and even in the arts and entertainment. Similarly, most of us would never say “my favorite team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year because there was too much competition in the NFL.”

But when it comes to local small businesses, we often succumb to this vague, un-defined notion that there is this magical amount of competition that’s “just right,” and if our favorite business can’t compete, then therefore there is “too much” competition.

And he points out that delis, as small businesses, are facing the ravages of Obamanomics typical of that type of organization:

 And guess what the LA Times article about the delis completely ignored? The impact of government policy on small businesses. Nowhere did it reference the expansive and onerous mandates placed upon business via Obamacare, the impact on business owners of the President’s payroll tax hike, or his income tax increases on “rich people.” 

No, the LA Times apparently wasn’t interested in how the President’s income tax hikes have taken money away from what the I.R.S. designates as “Subchapter S Corporations” (sometimes abbreviated as “S-corps”), and how this has effectively taken money directly out of small corporations, many of which operate small businesses. Likewise, the article made no reference to the fact California voters approved an increase in state income tax rates for “rich people” (thus leading to even less revenue in Subchapter-S Corporations) on their ballot last November, nor did it acknowledge that California has for years been on a trajectory of higher and higher unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation mandates for businesses.

Hitting the delis is always a must on any trip I take to New York, so this is a sad development.  Not only will I miss that particular kind of chow, but the continuing fading of the particularities of our culture as well. As we all assimilate by virtue of the homogenization of our food, music and customs, it will be left to the "diversity"-hustlers to keep the rich and distinct ways of living one found in the various types of neighborhoods in America -  when it was America -  alive.  Alas, that will be done in the manner of museum-curating, trotting out the delectables from the country's various cultural tributaries at "ethnic festivals" and in the form of offerings found in the frozen-food section of the supermarket, and there no doubt prepared with the kind of nodding to health persnickety-ness and mix-and-match whimsy typical of a culture that no longer has a grasp of its own heritage.

I wonder how Shapiro's in Indianapolis and Katzinger's in Columbus, Ohio are doing.  My two fave midwestern oases for this type of fare.