New York exodus: High costs, taxes drive residents to Florida

Here’s the thing about politicians: They talk tough when it costs them nothing — and when reality hits them in the face, they sing a very different tune. 

Take Kathy Hochul. Back in 2022, while campaigning for governor of New York, she had a message for Donald Trump and like-minded Republicans: “Just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. Okay? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values.”

So much for Democratic inclusivity — to say nothing about their supposed open-mindedness. What better way to say everyone is welcome here than telling your political opponents to pack up and leave the state?

Well, fast forward just four years and — surprise, surprise — people actually took her advice.

It wasn’t just Trump. It wasn’t just Republicans. It wasn’t just the hated billionaires, either. Regular, tax-paying New Yorkers looked around, checked their bank accounts, looked again at their tax bills … and said, “You know what? Florida sounds pretty good.” 

Now Hochul — who, by the way, is running for reelection — has encountered a new problem, to add to all the others a governor of New York already has: Trying to lure those people back.

Now she says maybe officials should head down to Palm Beach and see “who we can bring back home” because — wait for it — the tax base has been “eroded.”

Eroded? That’s one way to put it. Another way might be: “We told people to leave, and then they did.”

Memo to the governor: No amount of sweet-talking or cajoling will bring them back. People don’t uproot their lives on a whim. They leave because something isn’t working. And one of those “somethings” is the feeling that their hard-earned money is being treated like Rodney Dangerfield — it gets no respect.

Florida, meanwhile, offers year-round sunshine, beautiful beaches, and … no state income tax. You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to see the appeal.

This isn’t exactly a new story. Back in the 1970s, when I was a correspondent with CBS News, I went to Kingston, Jamaica to interview Michael Manley, the country’s socialist prime minister. He had a message for citizens who didn’t like his policies: There are “five flights a day to Miami … if you don’t like it, leave.”

And guess what: They did. Not a few or a handful, but a wave. Doctors, lawyers, engineers — people with skills, ambition and options — they just packed up and left.

And what happened next? Jamaica’s economy didn’t get stronger. It didn’t magically thrive. It declined. When productive people leave, they tend to take productivity with them. Funny how that works.

Now, am I saying New York is 1970s Jamaica? No. But the pattern? That’s looking awfully familiar. And just when you think maybe someone in charge might take a breath and reconsider where things are headed, along comes a proposal that sounds like it was cooked up in a graduate seminar titled “Good Intentions, Questionable Math.”

New York City is now considering raising the minimum wage from $17 to $30 an hour over the next few years.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani argues that in the world’s richest city, minimum wage workers shouldn’t live in poverty — and that raising wages to $30 an hour will put more money in people’s pockets and help the economy thrive.

It’s a nice sentiment. Who wouldn’t want people to earn more? But the question isn’t whether higher wages are good. The question is: Who pays — and what happens next?

Because here’s the part that tends to get skipped over among the political talking points: When you dramatically raise the cost of labor, businesses don’t just smile and absorb it out of goodwill. They adjust. They cut hours. They raise prices. They automate. Or — here we go again — they leave.

There’s always a point where policy stops being aspirational and starts being consequential. New York might want to figure out where that line is — before more New Yorkers decide to book a flight to Miami. And there are a lot more than five flights a day. 

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg.

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