Exodus!

Coming on the heels of the excellent post editorial yesterday, the City Room decided to pose the question: How Likely Are You to Leave New York? Some of the responses are eye opening, and underscore some of the latent anger that's out there over the high cost of living-much of it imposed by government-in New York. As one commenter said: "If I did not have a grade-school aged kid (I am divorced) living with her mother in NYC, I would have left this City and State long ago!! New York State & City have become a cesspool of special interests, greed, corruption and self-serving, elected politicians."

And another respondent has this to say: "I am more inclined to leave New York of late. It seems the city and state governments are not inclined to do anything that will encourage economic growth and job creation. All they want to do is raise taxes and prices (subway) to pay for ridiculous spending programs that should be cut in these lean times."

All of which may mean that the government here-at all levels-may have reached golden goose killing time; and the idea of fair share is pretty much a self serving mantra from folks dependent on a public pay check: "We are moving to Connecticut where property taxes are lower. We think Gov. Paterson and the legislature in Albany have lost their minds. “Good riddance” indeed. With the departure of people like us, taxes for the rest of you go up. Blame it on the political class."

Are these the millionaires fleeing? Of course they're not. But the WFP and company cleverly framed the argument for political consumption. In the long run. however, they may have been too clever by half-what with more than half the jobs in the city coming from the not-for-profit and government sectors. The nagging question ahead: Who's gonna pay the freight. A fair question, if not a fair share issue.