Notes from Miami

Notes from Miami

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

I lived in the eastern Catskills for 29 years, but I decided to jump ship for Florida when Zorhan Madmani was elected mayor of New York City.  It was a difficult decision: My late wife’s memorial stone is in Wiltwyck Rural Cemetery in Kingston, and I still love my former home in West Shokan. Kingston is a true community.  I will always cherish the friendships I forged here along with great institutions like MAC Fitness and Ulster Savings Bank, and great restaurants like Little Italy, the Bowery Dugout,  Savona, The Brickmen, and Le Canard.

There is some hope.  As a Republican, I support Bruce Blakeman for New York governor (not to mention Byron Donalds for governor of Florida), and a recent poll by the pro-Blakeman super PAC Strong and Safe placed Blakeman just four points below Gov. Hochul.  Mayor Madmani was recently booed at a Staten Island police event, and there was an anti-Madmani demonstration in Manhattan’s Little Italy in response to the city’s snubbing the neighborhood as an immigrant enclave.

Nevertheless, I won’t order my celebratory calamari just yet. RealClearPolitics published an average of recent polls, a poll of polls,  that gives Hochul 52.3% to Blakeman’s 35.0%.  It is possible that Blakeman can overcome the odds given public reaction to Madmani’s long list of absurd, authoritarian policies, but even if he does, he will be constrained by the New York state legislature, which is better suited to rule in Cuba or North Korea than in an American state.  The executive alone cannot reform what needs to be reformed in New York, which first and foremost is New York’s failed education system, which functions more as a left-wing indoctrination than as an education system.

According to the National Assessment of Education Progress, in 2024 only 31% of New York’s fourth graders and 31% of New York’s 8^th graders were proficient at reading. At the same time, New York City’s schools send students on left-wing political demonstrations. In September 2019, the NYC Department of Education encouraged 1.1 million students to participate in a climate strike, and there are ongoing school-based climate-action days. 

New York’s students cannot read or perform math well enough to evaluate evidence about climate change, but they are able to obey orders and politically protest when authoritarian schools tell them to. The chief aim of New York’s schools is to brainwash students into obedience to left-wing ideologues.  This has left them voting for economic decline.

 The left has moved in an Islamicist, antisemitic direction, and New York is increasingly dangerous for Jews. According to the Times of Israel, antisemitic hate crimes in New York have skyrocketed, apparently encouraged by the election of  the antisemitic mayor.  There were 41 confirmed antisemitic hate crimes in New York in May.  An NYU student hoisted a  flag that equated the Nazi swastika and a Jewish symbol over an NYU building, echoing Mayor Madmani’s threat to arrest the Israeli prime minister.

As dangerous as New York is becoming for Jews, it is even worse for people who achieve some success and so have income or assets to tax. Anyone who has money in the bank and doesn’t need to work is crazy to stay. 

At 10.9%, New York’s top marginal income tax rate ranks third, following only the People’s Republics of California (13.3%) and Hawaii (11%).  At 10.9% New York’s highest capital gains tax rate ranks second, following only California’s. If you total all taxes New Yorkers paid in 2023, New York has the highest tax collections per resident, at $12,506, in the nation. According to the Tax Foundation, New York is an outlier, for its state-and-local governments collect about $2,672 more per resident than number two North Dakota, and about 78% more than the national average.  Note that North Dakota’s high tax revenues come mostly from oil and gas taxation. 

Compare New York with Florida: Florida was 44^th in 2023 state-and-local tax collections, at $5,141 per person, while New was first at $12,056 in 2023.  Since then, Governor DeSantis  has worked to make Florida’s government more efficient, while Governor Hochul and Mayor Madmani have worked to make New York’s government more inefficient. Since 2022 New York State has spent several billion dollars on housing for illegal aliens, euphemistically called “asylum seekers,” and billions more in Medicaid for “asylum seekers.’  I am on my way to traveling to Greece and Italy, and I’ll be sure to demand that the governments of those countries pay for my health insurance and hotel room in return, for I too seek asylum.

 Despite New York’s spending’s doubling Florida’s, the ranking of New York’s roads are below average while the ranking of Florida’s are around average and well above New York’s.  One 2026 analysis places New York’s roads as the fifth worst in the nation. With respect to K-12 education, Florida also outranks New York despite New York’s spending substantially more per student.

 Florida also outpaces New York with respect to new business applications per capita and overall environment for starting a business.  Nearly 700,000 businesses formed in Florida in 2025 compared to 267,000 in New York.  WalletHub ranked Florida the best state in America to start a business while New York ranked 37^th.

New York remains the nation’s center for finance, media, advertising, and law, and it is still the bigger business hub, but that is gradually changing, and New York’s oblivious voters along with the economically illiterate policies of Mayor Madmani and Governor Hochul are accelerating the decline.   

For instance, Mayor Madmani’s recent attack on Ken Griffin has led to Griffin’s decision to locate the offices of the firm he founded, Citadel, to Miami. Citadel is an enormous hedge fund and trading company with combined revenue of about $40 billion. As Madmani attacks billionaires, millionaires, pied-a-terre owners, Jews, Italians, and Chinese merchants, more will relocate, and the city will decline. 

Madmani’s promise to his economically illiterate supporters that he will mandate a $30 minimum wage by 2030, if enacted, will further drive down the rate of business startups, cause small-business closures, and further contribute to New York’s downward spiral.  Madmani’s recent proscription list publicizing pied-a-terre owners in New York City, who have harmed no one and contribute to the city’s economy, is one more way to shrink the state’s economy.

Having arrived in Florida a few months ago, I see a stark contrast with New York. When I tried to get a real ID in Kingston, the county clerk’s bureaucracy refused to give me one because I used a PO box so that my utility bills were not sent to my home address. In Florida, they gave me a real ID without any questions despite my also having a PO box here. The public agency employees at the Florida DMV were friendly and customer-service oriented, in stark contrast to the nasty bureaucrats in Ulster County. The banking rules in Florida are more flexible. The culture in Miami is vibrant and exciting. There is a feeling of ongoing growth and opportunity. The people are warm and friendly. The diversity of Cuban and South American cultures combines with the entrepreneurial culture.

New York should wake up. If it doesn’t, get out before it’s too late. I’m happy I did.