The Huddled Masses Leaving En Masse

As it happens, business brings me to my favorite American travel destination, New York City. As an L.A. dude, I like Los Angeles’ great weather and more laid-back attitude. But Manhattan is something L.A. can never be, namely, a walker’s paradise. Happily ensconced in a very modest hotel in Midtown, I can take off in any direction and just walk, seeing the sites and working up my appetite, which can be sated at any number of superb (if somewhat spendy) restaurants.

So I couldn’t help noticing a Wall Street Journal piece about the exodus of New Yorkers from the state in general and the Big Apple in particular.

The US Census data show that over the last decade, about 1.6 million New Yorkers moved out of the state. The biggest chunk of these émigrés was from the city itself: 70% of New Yorkers moving out of state were from NYC, and another 10% were from Westchester and Nassau Counties, which are essentially suburbs of NYC.

These losses were offset in part by an influx of 900,000 foreign immigrants. But there was still a net loss of nearly 700,000 residents, and the number of foreign immigrants was the lowest in about four decades.

The three most popular destinations for fleeing New Yorkers are Arizona, Florida, and Nevada. This suggests that the desire for warmer weather may be a factor in peoples’ decisions to move. But two of those states have no state income taxes, which suggests that NewYork’s notoriously high taxes may be a powerful reason as well.