New York, where I live, and Florida, where I often visit, provide an interesting contrast. …They have comparable populations — New York with about 20 million people, Florida with 23 million. But New York state’s budget is more than double that of Florida ($239 billion vs. roughly $116 billion). New York City, which is a little more than three times the size of Miami-Dade County, has a budget of more than $100 billion, which is nearly 10 times that of Miami-Dade. New York City’s spending grew from 2012 to 2019 by 40 percent, four times the rate of inflation. Does any New Yorker feel that they got 40 percent better services during that time? …New York’s poverty rate is higher than Florida’s. New York has a slightly lower rate of homeownership and a much higher rate of homelessness. Despite spending more than twice as much on education per student, New York has educational outcomes — graduation rates, eighth-grade test scores — that are roughly the same as Florida’s. …The ultimate test, of course, is how people are voting with their feet. For years, New York has been losing people to states such as Florida. This same story can be told with minor variations about California and Texas. Basically, big red states are growing at the expense of big blue states…if Democrats do not learn some hard lessons from the poor governance in many blue cities and states, they will be seen as defending cultural elites, woke ideology and bloated, inefficient government.
And that’s what makes his latest column worth citing. When someone like him writes a damning indictment of New York statism and lauds Florida’s laissez-faire approach, that’s a sign that we are making progress.
Dan Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Chairman of the Board. He is an expert in international tax competition and supply-side tax policy.
