New York Governor Kathy Hochul evidently has figured out that her state is in a world of hurt. All those people that New York chased away with absurdly high taxes? She wants them to return:
Gov. Kathy Hochul is begging wealthy New Yorkers who fled the city to come back and continue padding the Empire State’s lavish public handouts.
Hochul made the case against caving to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s demands that she hike income taxes — by saying she not only wants fat cats to stay in the city, but also clawing at those who have moved to states with better business climates like Florida.
“Maybe the first step should be go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded,” the Democratic governor said at a forum hosted by Politico last week.
“I have to look at the fact that we are in competition with other states who have less of a tax burden on their corporations and their individuals,” she said.
Did she just now figure that out? Maybe Democrats are dumber than we thought.
The problem, of course, is that in order to become competitive, New York would have to carry out major surgery on its budget. Why are New Yorkers moving to Florida? Because Florida has many more people than New York, but its budget is less than one-half as much. This is why Florida doesn’t have an income tax, and is looking at cutting the taxes it does have. If New York wants to start competing, it has a long way to go.
Hochul is a recent convert to the need for competitiveness:
The comments are a far cry from Hochul’s much-derided remarks from her 2022 election campaign where she ripped her GOP opponent, Rep. Lee Zeldin, as well as then-Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro and President Trump, telling them and other New York Republicans to scram.
“Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values,” Hochul said at the time.
So, what are “our values”? Liberals always claim to be acting on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged, but those aren’t the ones who get most of the money. Government has largely become a money-laundering operation, in which people who actually do productive work pay taxes, and the government then gives their money to NGOs, consultants, and politically-favored companies, all of which purport to be doing good, but in fact are corrupt rackets.
Thus, to take just one example, New York City reportedly spends $81,000 to $97,000 per homeless person, more than the city’s median income. Does that mean that homeless people in New York are rolling in dough? No, it means that politically-favored Democratic Party constituencies are siphoning off enormous amounts of money while doing virtually no good.
It is hard to see a future for states like New York and California. They have driven out many of their productive citizens, and they are firmly in the grip of the Democratic Party’s core elements–public sector unions and “nonprofits” that rake in gigantic sums of money. Those organizations are parasites that won’t abandon their host until the host is dead.
