Fix New York
Governor Cuomo has acknowledged that New York State is hemorrhaging population and jobs.
During the last decade, tax and spend policies have driven almost two million of some of our most productive citizens from our state. New York joins Ohio as the only two states to lose the maximum number of two Congressional seats following the 2010 census.
As the Manhattan Institute’s Steve Malanga observed, New York “dominated the nation's economy through the early part of the 20th century, only to see massive outmigration of jobs and people, and subpar employment growth as its taxes and regulations rose.”
New Yorkers bear the highest tax burden in the country, and only Alaska has more government debt as a percentage of the economy. Spending on public welfare and the cost of healthcare, energy, insurance and government employees' pensions and retirement benefits are among the highest of the states.
The Mercatus Institute at George Mason University regularly calculates freedom rankings, based on comprehensive criteria rigorously applied, of the 50 states. This year New York shamefully ranks dead last (50th) in economic freedoms.
The Tax Foundation consistently ranks New York the least business friendly state in the nation.
While its resources slowly bleed to other financial centers, New York precariously remains the financial capital of the world; yet New York is among the minority of competing states and nations which tax capital gains as ordinary income.
Meanwhile, Republican governors in competing states are rewriting their tax codes to create business-friendly environments: Governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and John Kasich of Ohio have cut business taxes; Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has replaced an onerous business tax with a flat tax; Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels capped businesses’ property tax rates; and Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania is eliminating or phasing out business taxes.
New York is still home to the nation's, and indeed the world's, most robust financial center, greatest media center and most prestigious common law commercial courts. It has some of the world's greatest public and private centers of learning and greatest philanthropic and cultural organizations as well as historically innovative and effective infrastructure projects.
But after nearly sixty years of government overreach, New York needs to get back to a culture of freedom and opportunity with a fiscally and economically responsible government. That is the DNA of New York which made it America's dominant business state, and indeed America the dominant economic power, in the mid Twentieth Century.
Otherwise New York will continue its relative decline among the states, as will America among the nations of the world.
As New York Republicans, we believe not only in American exceptionalism but also in New York exceptionalism. A strong New York Republican Party will be a major force to arrest New York's economic decline and bring our state back to its rightful place as the predominant economy in America as the world's economic superpower.
Together we will FIX NY – and be the Empire State once again.
FIX NY is a regularly updated NYGOP website resource that sources solutions to the economic challenges faced by New York. It is a repository and portal for ideas and policies which can lead to a brighter future for our state and people and for America.
