It's bad enough that New York -- that city of 8 million Giants and Jets fans -- gave Philly another uber-complex this year when their homicide rate lagged far behind ours.

Now they're trying to cure poverty -- or at least make poor people happier -- and they're not even leasing out any of their airports. (Somewhere in Washington, Chaka Fattah just winced. "I coulda been a contenda! Oy ...")

In a nutshell: poor New Yorkers will get cash -- ranging from $100 to $350 -- for doing good things, like holding a job and going to the doctor. These so-called "healthy lifestyle payments" have been used in similar anti-poverty programs in Brazil and Mexico.

The kicker? New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has privately raised $40 million to fund the program, because he said he doesn't want to waste government money on a hypothetical program that might fail. Interesting, that. Imagine how Iron Mike would respond if he read a copy of George W. Bush's mega-tome, "Receipts from the Iraq War."

I'm not sure exactly how, in the long run, this program will affect New York's poverty rate or their ever-shrinking crime rate. But it does make for some interesting food for thought. Many folks see a direct correlation between Philly's crime and poverty rates; how would a program like this affect our own poorer citizens? Would it lead to fewer homicides and fewer kids turning to a life of drugs and guns? Somehow, I sense a torrent of replies that begin with the word, "NO!" but at the very least, the Big Apple remains the undisputed social idea factory to our north.