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Sunday, November 15, 2020

Fleeing the Chaos

From March through July, the US Postal Service received over 150,000 more requests in New York City to forward mail to new addresses than it did during the same period in 2019.  This is concrete proof that hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers fled the virus, the crime and the chaos of the Big Apple,  The bulk of the changes were for people moving to the suburbs, but a large number also fled NY state and even the region.

With the city still not even close to recovering from the virus (and things right now are going in the wrong direction), New York is lucky that the census was taken mostly prior to the mass exodus.  Losing three hundred thousand residents or more as these numbers indicate would have cut federal aid and even congressional seats from the city.  Those are based upon census numbers.

It's not surprising that so many have fled.  What we can't tell from these numbers is just how many of the affluent (who pay the bulk of the taxes) have left.  Based upon the zip codes with the biggest number of requests, however, it appears as if a much bigger chunk of the New York tax base left for elsewhere.

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