Waking up and smelling the socialist coffee, New York's Gov. Cuomo is doing Mayor Bill de Blasio's job now, begging New York City's residents to not move away from New York City. 

The middle class, the rich and the super-rich are doing just that, with 420,000 already just getting the hell out.

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been begging rich people to return to New York City from their second-home retreats so they can pay taxes to help offset the state’s growing coronavirus-related revenue shortfall.

“I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house, or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You got to come back! We’ll go to dinner! I’ll buy you a drink! Come over, I’ll cook!’” the Democratic governor said Monday.

“They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? ‘If I stay there, I’ll pay a lower income tax,’ because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge,” he added, noting the wealthiest 1 percent of the Empire State’s population picks up roughly 50 percent of the state’s tax burden.

It's what happens in all socialist hellholes, from East Berlin to Caracas. People flee. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

According to this 2018 Empire Center report, rich people in what's known as the top 1% -- making more than $713,706 a year --pay more than 50% of New York state's taxes, and at least 43% of New York City's taxes.

Yet what they get for their money is pretty much zilch, starting with personal security. New York's police have been defunded by $1 billion and before that's even gone through, robberies on the wealthy Upper East Side have spiked 286%, according to the Daily Mail. Sure, some rich New Yorkers have security guards. But in a thick crowded city like New York, it's often not the story. What's more, many of the wealthy live in New York City because they like the stimulating experience of city living, hopping over to Bergdorf's for a new outfit and then strolling over to Harry Cipriani's for the ladies who lunch, and then taking in a gallery or a play. A lot of the nice restaurants frequented by the rich are shutting down, leaving one less reason to stay. So's Broadway. And the schools in the age of COVID, for those who use public schools, which the productive middle class certainly does, are costing big in taxes and now delivering nothing. And now with taxes set to go sky high with a $1.5 billion plan to shake down the rich in the works from the rabidly left state legislature, why would anyone want to stay?

As Billy Joel once sang: Is that all you get for your money?

The same sort of socialist hog-wallowing, followed by elected leaders begging residents to stay has also been seen in Seattle and Minneapolis in recent weeks. It might be some sort of trend. But it won't stop people from fleeing.

Such wretched pleas completely fail to recognize why people are fleeing.

Yet they're a far cry from what has been seen in California, which treats the flight of its productive residents as no crisis (even the state's illegal immigrants are fleeing), and literally cheers when businesses pull up stakes and move to Texas. Remember this?

After Elon Musk sued local authorities in California and threatened to move Tesla’s HQ to Texas or Nevada over attempts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, one Democratic state politician had a blunt message for the electric car magnate: “F*ck Elon Musk.”

Cuomo's plaint calls to mind that leftist blue cities and states can be divided into two groups of people - those who look at the bookkeeping, and those who don't. Cuomo is doing de Blasio's job by calling on New York City's fleeing residents to not flee. De Blasio is busy painting Black Lives Matter graffiti in New York's city streets. Minnesota's denizens are begging for businesses not to leave. California's are cheering those who do. It's almost a litmus test for separating out the crazy socialists from the really crazy socialists. Hugo Chavez used to cheer when wealthy Venezuelans moved out of his country as he was turning it into a hellhole. Maybe this litmus test of the crazy and the crazier is an indicator of which places become Venezuela the fastest.