It seems that if you tell people you hate them enough, and harass them enough, they go away. Who knew?

Governor David Patterson stated that if he had known that Rush Limbaugh would leave the state of New York he would have raised taxes sooner.



Limbaugh, who paid millions of dollars in taxes to New York, is not alone. From the NY Post: Tax refugees staging escape from New York

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers -- and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows.

More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.

The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City -- meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.

"The Empire State is being drained of an invaluable resource -- people," the report said.

While it’s fun to tweak the dysfunctional government of a state like New York, this raises s serious question. A large part of New York’s revenue comes from taxing the financial services industry and its previously highly paid workers. The industry and its people are in New York for historical reasons: New York has been the financial center of the US, the location of the NY Stock exchange, of Wall Street.

The financial collapse followed by the war on the financial services industry that has been declared by the Obama Administration and liberals in congress have decimated that industry and moved the center of financial industry power to Washington. It is not hard to foresee the New York based banks and brokerage houses going into a decline - like the news industry. Who will pay the taxes and support the lifestyle of New Yorkers when the richest and most productive members of the population “Go Galt” and decamp?