Still don’t believe the progressive agenda, and not just COVID, is clobbering New York? Then take a look at sobering new data showing scores of Wall Street firms have continued to flee since 2019, along with the nearly $1 trillion in assets they manage.
The data, compiled by Bloomberg, include 158 financial firms, managing $993 billion in assets, that headed for the exits.
Icahn Capital Management, which oversees $22.2 billion in assets, took off in 2020. ARK Investment Management relocated to the Sunshine State the next year, along with $24.7 billion in assets.
In 2022, AllianceBernstein, with $685 billion in assets, moved out.
These companies not only take assets and jobs with them but also salaries — that could be spent in New York.
Wall Street firms alone accounted for 16% of the city’s economy last year.
The result: a monumental loss of tax revenue.
In fiscal 2023, financial-sector firms forked over $5.4 billion in city taxes; in fiscal 2022, they paid $22.9 billion to the state.
Notably, the exodus of firms continued through March, long past the end of the pandemic.
Most firms headed to low-tax southern states; Florida picked up more than a third of New York’s runaways.
Why are they leaving? Clearly not just to escape COVID: Vaccines became widely available in 2021, and daily COVID deaths hit their last major peak in January 2022.
Other factors — New York’s high taxes, crime, poor schools, cost of living and, yes, weather — all share blame.
Yet New York progressives continue to raise taxes while doing little about crime, schools and the cost of living.
Meanwhile, it’s grown easier to move: We’ve all proved that many people can work and do business remotely.
That threatens to accelerate the decades-long shrinkage of New York’s share of the nation’s population, reflected in its loss of seats in the House of Representatives from 45 in 1953 to just 26 today.
The flight from New York has coincided with its long lurch leftward, an ever-worsening downward cycle: As the leftist agenda sends conservatives (and sane Democrats) fleeing, it leaves more radical leftists behind to press ever-more radical agendas — sending even more people and businesses away.
Last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul actually encouraged critics to “jump on a bus and head down to Florida, where you belong.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo before her told conservatives they “have no place in the state.”
Yet here’s the big problem for progressives: If their agenda keeps driving away businesses, people and tax revenue, who’ll pay for their pricey policies?
Last one out, turn off the lights.