Thanks as always to The Other McCain, The Daley Gator, Pirate’s Cove, Whores and Ale, Flappr and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!  As always, if I’ve missed your link, let me know in the comments and I’ll get you added to the FMJRA lineup.

Now then:  It looks like half a million people have decamped from New York City in the last few years.  Fox Business has the numbers:

A report by the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday estimated more than 468,200 residents left New York City between April 2020 and July 2022, accounting for a 5.3% decrease in the city’s population. The largest loss came between 2020 and 2021 when the population declined by just over 281,000.

Only three other U.S. cities saw worse percentages during the same time period, with San Francisco, California losing 7.5% of its residents, Louisiana’s Lake Charles losing 6.9% and Revere, Massachusetts losing 5.9%

Despite the loss of hundreds of thousands of residents, NYC remains America’s largest city by a long shot as more than 8.3 million people call it home.

And why is this happening?  Well, look at where these folks are fleeing to:

The report also revealed that most of the people leaving the metropolitan areas are hunkering down in the Southern states. Nine of the country’s 15 fastest-growing cities are below the Mason-Dixon line, and six of them are in Texas.

Georgetown, Texas had the largest population boom in 2022, with an estimated 14.4% increase.

So, they are going from states where the government (especially in the recent COVID nonsense) is more restrictive and tax rates are higher, to states where the government is less restrictive and tax rates are lower.

This, honestly, should come as a surprise to no one.  The concern, of course, is that these migrants will bring their voting habits with them, and in so doing plunge their new homes into the same kind of chaos they left in their former states.  While there certainly will be some of that – my own former home of Colorado has gone completely off the rails in large part because of just this – there are also a fair number of people who left seeking political environments that are more friendly to what they already believe.  It remains to be seen how much of each will land in these refuge states.

Back to New York:  This is what high taxes, ineffective policing and constant racial pandering will bring to a major city.  It’s no wonder people are fleeing.  What I’m curious about is if the remaining people in the Big Apple will ever wise up.