Opinion

STEVE FORBES: 4 ways to fix what’s wrong with New York City and stop the exodus

The city's $115.9 billion budget dwarfs Florida's, yet families flee overcrowded housing and declining services

By Steve Forbes Fox News

Published April 28, 2026 5:00am EDT

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The political class in New York keeps looking for complicated explanations for a very simple fact: people leave when government makes life too expensive, too cramped, too disorderly, and too unrewarding.

That is what has happened in New York City.

For years, City Hall and Albany behaved as though New York’s appeal was permanent and its taxpayers, captive. They assumed families would tolerate shrinking apartments, swelling rents, dirty streets, unreliable transit, rising taxes, bureaucratic arrogance and diminishing public order because, after all, this is New York. That conceit is now colliding with reality. New Yorkers across income levels have been voting with their feet.

The numbers are striking. The Citizens Budget Commission found that New York City lost 166,000 people, representing 52,600 households, to domestic outmigration in 2022 alone. That loss reduced city tax revenue by an estimated $309 million, including at least $259 million in personal income tax revenue.

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New York City isn't delivering competent government, but it's not too far gone to save. (Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

This is not merely a story of a few wealthy financiers decamping to Palm Beach. It is broader and more troubling than that. The New York City Comptroller found that between 2019 and 2023 the city lost roughly 83,000 full-year resident tax filers and nearly 347,000 people attached to those returns. The decline was concentrated among married couples and families with children, while virtually all the net decline in filers and population was concentrated among returns with incomes of $50,000 and under.

In plain English, New York is losing people from the bottom, the middle, and the........

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