Florida man responds to Hochul’s demand people return to NY and pay high taxes
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has a Florida problem. Facing a ballooning budget deficit and an ever-narrowing lead in her reelection bid against Republican candidate Bruce Blakeman, Nassau County’s Trump-endorsed executive, the Sunshine State is draining cash from her coffers and has been for years. “I need people who are high-net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state,” she told a Politico interviewer last week, musing that “maybe the first step should be to go down to Palm Beach and see who we can bring back home because our tax base has been eroded.”
Hochul’s fanciful declaration got a big round of laughs from Palm Beach residents, many of whom moved here in recent years specifically to get away from the Democratic governor, her problematic state, its high taxes, and its social programs, which were evidently not “generous” – or successful – enough to dissuade them. Maybe her first step should be to start at home and ask – we often do – why she can’t find the money in New York, which already has the nation’s highest tax rates and, especially in Islamocommunist-governed New York City, is about to go higher.
Even before Hochul took over from New York’s disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2021, the exodus was well underway. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, over 1 million New York State residents have moved elsewhere since 2020, with Florida consistently rating as their number one destination. Florida’s population, meanwhile, rose by about 2 million in the same period, welcoming transplants seeking the good life not only from New York, but from adjacent and almost equally blue New Jersey, as well as California, Illinois, high-tax New England states, and other unfavorable jurisdictions.
The initial burst of transplants brought not just the very wealthy, but hordes of well-paid professionals in finance, consulting, tech, entertainment, medicine, and other lucrative fields that could either accommodate remote work or easily absorb new arrivals. Tales abounded of desperate searches for real estate, school admissions, club memberships, medical services, used cars, and just about anything else new Floridians need to live the dream happily in a state where income and inheritance taxes are constitutionally banned.
New York’s tax base took a serious hit, especially under Hochul’s five-year watch. More than half of those who left the state were New York City residents, some 546,000 by April 2024, who took their above-average taxable income and other liquid assets with them. In 2025, over 50,000 more City residents left. In 2023 alone, IRS data records show that New York State lost $9.9 billion in gross adjusted income. Taken cumulatively, and assuming our new neighbors don’t listen to Hochul and go back, Unleash Prosperity’s data suggests New York could lose as much as $517 billion over the long term. As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis frequently reminds us, since 2020, Florida has had the largest in-migration of capital of any state, not just today, but in all of American history. In those same years, New York has lost more capital than any other state.
Hochul is right to worry about more high-income earners dropping New York like a hot potato – so worried, obviously, that her comments suggest she needs to focus on recovering those who are already gone. According to the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, the 20,000 New Yorkers who have come to Palm Beach County in recent years brought with them their annual per capita income of $190,000, over three times the national average yearly income. Miami is an even greater magnet for New York wealth. The 26,000 New Yorkers who moved there boast per capita earnings of $266,000. New York’s share of the nation’s millionaires has declined by 31% over the last five years, while Palm Beach’s billionaire population has, according to some calculations, increased by 50% or more. The election of Zohran Mamdani anticipated $100 million in Florida real estate deals within days of his winning New York City’s mayoralty. New York flight is now such a commonplace occurrence that MovingPlace, a relocation advisory website, shows middle-income earners, bracketed between $50,000 and $200,000, now decisively exceeding the number of high-income earners who leave in what it calls “the affordability exodus.”
Hochul claimed that “there are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up” and went back, but there is remarkably little evidence of any serious trend to return to New York. In recent years, the number of people who made the opposite move has hovered just above 20,000, a fraction of those who have come. Former New York City Mayor Eric Adams embarrassed himself trying to encourage this path in 2022, when he placed billboard ads in several left-leaning Florida municipalities, urging people to come back, allegedly so they would enjoy greater free-speech rights. Few went, and in a brutal confirmation of his hypocrisy, a New York City attorney who had the temerity to ask the mayor when the COVID masks would finally come off was summarily fired.
Hochul certainly bears some responsibility for her state’s larger predicament. While running for reelection the first time, in 2022, she memorably invited her opponents and those who disagreed with her high-tax policies to leave. “Trump and [2022 New York gubernatorial candidate Lee] Zeldin and [New York 2022 lieutenant-governor candidate Marc] Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values.” Perhaps they don’t, but now she is hoping the same group will “cut me the checks if you want to be supportive.” No thanks, Gov.