The New York Post editorial board is raising the alarm over the future fate of the city. They begin by pointing to the results of a recent study which found that the Big Apple has more millionaires per capita than any other large urban area in the world. That number is growing because there are now 48% more millionaires in the city than there were one decade ago. They also note that Gotham has plenty to offer the wealthy, having recently been ranked as the most desirable place to live in the world because of its nightlife, cultural attractions, and fine cuisine. (Assuming you can afford armed security guards to keep the criminals away from you.) But there's one thing that might be able to drive the millionaires away, and that's the legislature in both the city and state of New York. They are heaping financial punishment on the heads of the wealthy all the time and there is more on the way.
The city’s place as top dog is under siege as progressive politicians push to squeeze the wealthy in order to fund lawmakers’ spend, spend, spend habits.
The latest state budget contained another $4 billion in spending while keeping “emergency” COVID tax hikes in place.
And though New York already has the nation’s highest tax burden, progressives keep pushing for more: The state Senate and the Assembly wanted an eye-watering $2.2 billion in tax hikes, which included nailing top earners (those earning more than $5 million per year) with another half a percentage point.
They failed this time, but sticking it to the city’s wealthy remains a top lefty priority.
It's worth noting that New York, like many other places, enacted "emergency tax hikes" during the pandemic. Those taxes, primarily on the wealthy, were intended to offset the economic damage caused by the COVID shutdowns. The pandemic is long since over and the city has reopened for business, but the tax hikes remain. Did anyone honestly think they were going to go away once they were in place?
The Post notes that progressive policies have already driven some of the most successful New Yorkers away to more business-friendly places like Florida and Texas. That includes Donald Trump, though his situation is obviously a bit more complicated. It's true that the wealthy leave New York at lower rates than other income categories, but quite a few of them have indeed left. The Democrats in the state government are already pushing for another $2.2 billion in tax increases and they will eventually get them. You can only load so much of a burden on a horse before it bucks.
As far as being "a great place to live" goes, that's not as true as it used to be. The restaurants, museums, and Broadway shows are all still there, but getting to them safely is another question. Crime in the streets of the Big Apple is becoming ubiquitous, with maniacs walking around and randomly punching people in the face or shoving them onto the subway tracks. Many of the fine hotels where the wealthy may have previously booked rooms for their guests are now filled up with illegal migrants who are trashing the facilities.
New York's millionaires are being given every incentive imaginable to pack up and leave. There are other states with far lower taxes and fewer problems with rampant crime. When they go, the tax base departs with them. That means there will be even less funding for essential services that are already strained. That could set up a vicious cycle where Gotham steadily begins to look more like Baltimore than the top of the world. All of these issues are being driven by the liberal, tax and spend, soft-on-crime policies enacted by the state legislature and the New York City Council. This should be a preventable catastrophe, but the liberal politicians are like a pack of cash junkies who simply can't stop searching for their next hit.
