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 8th
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.
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 44th 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.
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.
