NEW YORK –

In these suddenly wintry days, sunrise does not begin to lighten the gloom until just before 7 a.m., but when its rays strike the plate glass towers all over the city, they turn it into gold, with a shining brightness that dazzles the eyes.

New York is still the world's most golden city in more ways than the sun dancing on the windows of the signature skyscrapers. The last few weeks have given many New Yorkers much to celebrate, especially those in finance and property. Both the major stock market indicators, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the broader S&P 500, the most commonly used markers of the health of the world economy, are in record territory. American economic growth is robust at 3.9 percent.

On top of this, New York and the United States have a new crowning achievement: the new One World Trade Center building opened for business in November, a landmark 1,776 feet (541.3 meters) high, a deliberate reminder of the year of America's Declaration of Independence. It stands close to the site of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, which were destroyed in the Islamic terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001.

For all this, New York's economic and social glass is not full, though more than half, maybe two thirds, full. There is a wonderful vibrancy about the city, unrivaled anywhere on earth.

But there are obvious reasons why New Yorkers should worry about their children's and grandchildren's futures, even leaving aside the political shenanigans a few hundred kilometers south in Washington.

One World Trade Center, originally called the Freedom Tower is the talk of the city. Architecturally, one critic called it "9/11 kitsch." The main 104-story structure is only 417 meters, the same height as the North Tower of the downed Twin Towers.

To achieve the 1,776 magic number, a 408 feet high spire was added, like a giant javelin or a fancy exclamation mark or, as one critic complained, "a thin ribbed condom." It is particularly bizarre at night when lit up. In blue, it looks like a gas flame.

Below, the tower is all sharp plate glass. If art is supposed to be a comment on a screwed up but beautiful world, what does the One World Trade Center building say? Zachary M. Seward writing in Quartz declared that the designers "Clearly just gave up on making any comment whatsoever. The highly reflective glass covering most of the tower seems to say, fine, whatever, see whatever you like in this façade."

Christopher Ward of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said, "It was meant to be all things to all people."

Time magazine gushed all over the building, "The Top of America," it declared, although the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, is 12 meters higher. "One World Trade Center has already succeeded. It has reclaimed the sky," claimed Time.

It took 10,000 workers to build it plus $3.9 billion. Security was uppermost in the planners' minds. It has a bomb resistant 20-story base set on 70-ton shafts of steel and pilings extending 62 meters underground. It has 48,000 tons of steel, enough to make 22,500 full-sized cars, 13,000 exterior glass panels, and enough concrete to lay a path from Manhattan to Chicago. The planners boast that it may not be the world's tallest building, "but it is the safest."

It took eight years to build, during which nine governors of New York and New Jersey, two mayors, an outspoken developer, many architects, thousands of family members of victims and tens of thousands of local residents squabbled over the shape and design of the 6.47-hectare site. "Ground Zero is more a battlefield than a memorial" was said many times over the arguments about the design and construction.

On the way, the workers discovered, besides possessions of the 9/11 victims, an 18th-century ship, a button from the coat of a British soldier during the war for American independence, cattle bones from a 19th-century slaughterhouse, and a huge pothole below sea-level from the Ice Age.

One World Trade Center is the world's tallest all-office building , with almost 270,000 square meters of space, of which magazine company Conde Nast is taking more than 90,000. It is the fourth-tallest skyscraper in the world, after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Abraj Al Bait in Saudi Arabia and Shanghai Tower. When the building's observation deck opens next year, it will cost $32 to visit, $26 for children.

It is literally a stone's throw from One World Trade Center to the New York Stock Exchange, where business is booming. Soaring Wall Street indices are a mixed blessing.

Obviously it is nice for those who have invested well or called the rising market correctly. But cynics would say that this is only paper money, not real wealth, that has been helped to its skyscraper rise by the trillions of dollars of quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Markets are fickle, and the champagne prices hide plenty of bubbles. Thoughtful commentators worry that next year there will be a crash, with potentially devastating consequences not merely for the holders of the paper wealth, but for jobs and livelihoods and lives in the real economy.

The rise and rise of stock markets has exacerbated the yawning gulf between rich and poor. U.S. unemployment has fallen to 5.8 percent, encouraging optimistic economists to claim that America is ready to lead the world again.

But wages have not kept pace with the record rise of corporate profits. The Economic Policy Institute reported recently, "American workers have seen no real wage growth in the past 3½ decades."

How can prosperity be maintained when the majority of people are left out, and the poorest have to take two or three jobs to sustain themselves and their families?

This is the leading question for the U.S. and much of the West.

New York's vibrancy is contagious. Even though the wind is icing through the narrow canyons with the skyscrapers on either side and reducing the temperature to minus 12 degrees Celsius with wind chill factored in, Macy's, the world's largest department store, held extensive Thanksgiving sales, and the hoards poured in, visitors from China, India, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Thailand, Latin America, along with native New Yorkers, a babel of tongues and accents on a theme of English, all determined to follow the adage of "shop until you drop."

With bargains in all departments running from 20 to 60 percent off, it was a splendid economy-boosting idea that showed that capitalism is alive and well in New York even if it has died in Japan.

But queuing for 30 minutes to an hour to pay for goods took the shine off the bargains, and pointed to underlying economic and social issues in the U.S. Macy's systems could not cope with the variety of prices, including reductions and extra bonuses for coupons or loyalty cards; most worryingly, payment was slow because of badly trained, poorly educated, wretchedly paid staff.

New York itself manages to sustain itself generation after generation with the infusion of immigrants attracted to the city that never sleeps. Foreign-born New Yorkers are 37 percent of the 8 million inhabitants. But the soaring prices of essentials must be a cause for concern. Luxury housing now sells at $3,000 a square foot, and a penthouse on Park Avenue is earmarked for sale at $130 million.

At the other extreme, New York workers are being driven out further and further into the suburbs or into tiny rabbit holes in Manhattan.

On the subway train across the city, I looked at the passengers and thought what a shabby lot, tired, huddled masses, longing to breathe free, but in New York these days, everything costs.

Kevin Rafferty, a professor at the Institute for Academic Initiatives at Osaka University, previously worked at the World Bank.