RSS Feed MenuHigh taxes, lack of opportunity, and intrusive government regulations have created a mass exodus of people from New York State, according to a recent report by the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for New York State Policy. New York experienced a net loss of 1.5 million residents between 2000 and 2008. That amounts to around 8 percent of the state’s population at the beginning of the decade. And this is not a recent trend. The report also notes that 1.7 million people left the state during the 1990s.
The reasons for this mass migration are almost wholly economic in nature. There can be no coincidence that while New York ranks number one in the country in terms of net population drain, it also ranks at or near the top in terms of the tax and fee burden it imposes on its residents. From region to region, there are subtle differences in the motivating factors behind rounding up the kids, selling the house, and leaving the state. Downstate and New York City emigrants cite high taxes and housing costs. Upstate, the scarcity of jobs and high property taxes are the key drivers. And all over the state, heavy land use, environmental, and business regulations have driven away small businesspeople.
New York has been shedding its population, and consequently its Congressional seats and political power, for decades. But only in recent years has the stream become a flood. State and local governments have perpetuated this by raising taxes and fees to account for the loss in income and business tax revenue. The higher the taxes get, the more people leave. An aggressive downward spiral has developed.
What needs to happen is serious belt-tightening in Albany along with relaxation of taxes and regulations. That is how business can thrive in New York State. And that is how to keep people from leaving.
balconesfault // Oct 28, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Out of curiousity … when you look at these long-term trends, do you stop to consider that until 2009, the NY State Senate was in Republican control for decades, and a Republican was Governor for 12 years in the center of the time period under discussion, from 1995 through 2006?
Partisanship aside, do you factor cost of real estate into your equation at all? The median home price in the NY Metro area, for example, runs around half a million dollars. The median prices in Atlanta, and Columbia, and Knoxville, and Mobile, and other Southern locations are all well under 200K. If you’re looking at relocating your company to a place where it will be cheaper to recruit talent – where are you going?
(ps – it helps if your decision isn’t going to send them into the snowbelt of upstate NY, when a sunbelt location is on the list)
ottovbvs // Oct 28, 2009 at 7:28 pm
…….Wasn’t there a Republican governor (Pataki) for most of this time?
JeninCT // Oct 28, 2009 at 10:05 pm
The county government system adds a whole layer of taxes. Consider that right over the border in CT where state taxes are high, we have no expensive county governments to tax us and are much better off.
sinz54 // Oct 29, 2009 at 8:58 am
balconesfault: NY State Senate was in Republican control for decades, and a Republican was Governor for 12 years in the center of the time period under discussion, from 1995 through 2006?
It’s not a partisan issue, where New York is concerned.
Republicans in New York State tend to be at least moderate or even genuinely liberal. Remember such famous liberal Republicans as Jacob Javits and John Lindsay. Even Nelson Rockefeller leaned left on a lot of issues. John McHugh, whom Obama picked to be SecArmy, leaned left on a number of issues too.
There haven’t been that many genuinely conservative figures from New York State. Alphonse d’Amato is the only one I can think of offhand.
cwillia11 // Oct 29, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Ohio is not far behind New York. We, too, have been cursed with big spending Republicans, regulation, high marginal tax rates and public sector unionism. I think that when a state is prosperous for a long time government just tends to get ever bigger, more intrusive and less effective. More and more parasites feed on the goose that lays the golden eggs until the goose dies or leaves the scene. States like California, Michigan, Ohio and New York need to emulate states like Texas.
sinz54 // Oct 29, 2009 at 2:43 pm
cwillia11: I think that when a state is prosperous for a long time government just tends to get ever bigger, more intrusive and less effective.
I disagree.
I just think that the source of prosperity for a given state doesn’t last forever.
Michigan, of course, was the home of the U.S. auto industry. It thrived as long as Americans had no other decent alternatives. But Honda and Toyota eventually started producing cars that got better mileage and fewer repairs, and that was the beginning of the end of the U.S. auto industry–and of Michigan. (And there was a ripple effect to the suppliers in Ohio too.) Year after year, the top-rated cars by Consumer Reports were all imports. GM was never able to produce a better car than the imports. Now with GM in bankruptcy, Michigan is foundering.
New York is in trouble because its biggest source of revenue was Wall Street, which collapsed in 2008.
The lesson is that a state can’t be dependent on just one big industry to sustain its tax base. Pittsburgh managed to diversify successfully away from steel (another industry that died due to foreign competition) into high-tech. All states should do similarly.
DFL // Oct 30, 2009 at 10:20 am
Stay north, Yankees. You always create big messes when you move south.
sinz54 // Nov 1, 2009 at 11:57 am
dfl: Stay north, Yankees. You always create big messes when you move south.
That’s true.
Look what Sherman did to Atlanta.