Back in 2020, many months into the Left’s presidential campaign strategy doing business as the COVID pandemic and Peaceful Protests™, GraniteGrok predicted it could be the beginning of the end of big cities like New York.
What bad Democrat policies began, Covid-19 accelerated, Democrat lockdowns exacerbated, and Democrat-encouraged riots put into high gear: Productive citizens are fleeing the big cities, especially the Democratic Party’s strongholds, and even those who initially meant to return are finding that life is better in the suburbs, or even in rural America.
Weren’t we clever?
Nearly 160 Wall Street firms have moved their headquarters out of New York since the end of 2019, taking nearly $1 trillion — yes, that’s trillion with a “T” — in assets under management with them, according to data from 17,000 companies compiled by Bloomberg.
Looking to dodge rampant crime, stiff taxes and an increasingly exorbitant cost of living, 158 fed-up financial firms representing a whopping $993 billion in assets have packed up and left the Big Apple, taking thousands of high-paid employees with them, the data shows.
The lockdowns and rise of remote everything from learning to working brightened a light bulb (probably LED in earth-friendly packaging) over the pointy heads of corporate boards and small businesses alike. Why am I paying top dollar on office space for employees who can do the same job from home? As Mike Rogers noted back in September 2020,
When New York became unsafe in the 70’s and 80’s, there was no reasonable way for collaborative work, or trading which required lightning-fast responses, to be done from a home in the boondocks, but today, and indeed for more than ten years now, internet speeds have made it possible for anybody who does not need specialized machinery to work from anywhere a desk, a computer, and an internet connection can be set up.
The big cities have become increasingly expensive for high earners to live in, and people have been gradually making the choice between living comfortably for less versus crowded and expensive living conditions balanced by a lively social scene. The gradual walking away became a brisk trot with the Covid lockdowns, as anybody who had the option left the cities for quieter and less infected locales, but it became a stampede as the BLM/Antifa riots and looting wiped out large swaths of what made downtown worthwhile.
The housing crisis in many states these days started when urbanites tucked tail and ran as far from the monster they’d help create as possible. Biden’s open borders invasion has not helped, nor have the Demcorats’ economic priorities, which are littering vast swaths of America with Bidenvilles; homeless camps punctuated by rising property crime, violent crimes, sexual assault, and overdose deaths adjacent to high-rise hotels filled with illegal aliens.
A Democrat Socialists Normal Rockwell.
These Democrats have hardly had to do a thing to ruin America’s cities but be themselves a lesson for everyone everywhere who will listen as the people in them with the means are heading for the hills. Good for them, but not for the rest of us. While they are quick to abandon the results of decades of Democrat rule grasping how things got so bad is less common. Like a virus, they spread that progressive contagion to sleepy bergs or smaller states with quaint pastoral character, little bureaucratic burden, low crime, and high quality of life.
These fragile blessings crumble quickly under the marching boots of leftists who had the sense to get away from failure only to lack the reason not to duplicate it in their new environment.
Vermont invaded years ago and went down with very little fight. Maine is headed that way. And we’ve been fighting it in New Hampshire for decades, clinging bitterly to our liberties, low crime, high quality of life, low poverty, and above-average incomes. All the things you’ll lose if the Left gets its fangs in deep enough.
The added weight of urban refugees who don’t know how things got so bad where they were or stayed so good where they went can tip the scales to the Left, so it is left to the locals to get them with the program.
New Hampshire, the lone holdout in New England, is increasingly under outside pressure to give in to the progressive impulse.
The outsiders have been pouring in since before COVID, but the game is still afoot. House prices are high, but deep-pocketed urban Wall Street or Tech types have the money to free themselves from the inevitable decline that follows Democrat rule and, as it turns out, funds the campaigns of the same where they land.
Repeating lessons they’ve not yet learned. A different kind of invasion from which escape seems increasingly less likely. But that’s why we fight the fight, yes?
“The battle against tyranny is eternal, as is the desire for liberty, but tyranny never rests, so – like them – neither shall we.”