By Steve Levy
Since the opening of the stock markets in the earliest stages of our nation’s development, the financial capital of America was in New York City, more particularly, Wall Street.
There was a sense that it would always remain there. New York was a thriving center of culture, capitalism and international flavor. It was never a thought that the stock exchange could be headquartered anywhere else.
But, today, we live in a different time in which people and companies are far more mobile. There’s nothing keeping multimillionaires and even billionaires from staying in New York and enduring its punitive and confiscatory levels of taxation and over-regulatory hassles — not to mention the rising crime that has made the city a far less desirable place in which to live and work.
Dallas, Texas affords the business community a corporate-friendly atmosphere with no state taxation and room to grow.
The uber-left in New York State have used Wall Street as a cash cow for generations. But there’s always the point where one can kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
As a member of the state Assembly over twenty years ago, I saw how even the more socialist elected officials prayed that the Wall Street numbers, especially the bonuses doled out to the thousands who worked downtown, would come in big. They did so, not for any love toward the capitalists they despised, but rather because they knew those higher incomes would generate huge tax revenues flowing into the state coffers to fund all their programs.
We might have reached the point where an increasing number of savvy business folks are heading to more hospitable venues. Is that what it will take for Albany’s big spenders to stop issuing one punitive tax after another on wage earners? Let’s hope our governor and state Legislature get the message before it’s too late.
Steve Levy is Executive Director of the Center for Cost Effective Government, a fiscally conservative think tank. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.”