Blue cities have become socialist hellholes, and not surprisingly, people are fleeing.

High taxes, extended lockdowns, massive crime, and rioting and looting have all driven taxpayers from Portland to New York to pack up and leave their cities, heading to friendlier red climes where rule of law is a thing, taxes are low, businesses are easy to start, and public officials show common sense on COVID risks.  According to the New York Post:

FlatRate Movers said the 100 moves a day it does in the city are very different from previous years.

"We used to move a lot of people from Brooklyn to Manhattan or Queens," said David Giampietro, the company's chief administrative officer. "Now it's the mileage. We're not going 5 miles anymore. It's more like 20, 30, 40" to New Jersey, Connecticut and upstate.

More than 16,000 New Yorkers changed their address to Connecticut from March through June, the Hartford Courant reported.

United Van Lines and Mayflower movers said it had done 1,000 out-of-state moves from New York City starting in March, with 28 percent to Florida and California, and 16 percent to Texas and North Carolina.

Writer James Alschuler notes that it's gotten very bad in New York, indeed — so bad that he forecasts that the city won't be recover.  His must-read piece is here.

It ought to be a point of embarrassment for these blue leftist ruling claques that people are fleeing.  People flee the chaos of systemic socialism wherever it is found, sometimes on leaky rafts, sometimes by barreling over walls, and sometimes by UHaul, and all these elites can think is, they're in good company.  Like shortages, people voting with their feet is found wherever socialism is found. 

So here we are, with thousands of productive people fleeing New York, and instead of begging for them to come back, as Andrew Cuomo did in not so serious terms a few weeks ago, the hardest of the hardcore leftists are now saying, "Big deal, there's more where that came from."

Here's the view of a leftist professor, explaining why human and capital flight is no problemo in New York City, according to Axios:

• "What's going to really save New York is immigrants," says Hacker, who has taught political science to many generations of them.
• While lots of New Yorkers are leaving, "out there in Bangalore and Ukraine and Natal, there are people who want to be New Yorkers" who will gladly take their place, bringing their ambition and brainpower.
• Hacker welcomes these voluntary New Yorkers: "I only want people in the city who want to be here."

This is pretty much the same thing Mayor Bill de Blasio said just a couple weeks ago.  According to the New York Post, emphasis mine:

I think you'll see a certain number of people who leave and at the appropriate time — after there's a vaccine — will come back. I think you'll see some people decide they want a different kind of lifestyle, I think those people will be replaced by other people coming in," de Blasio said. "I think that pattern will start again over the next couple of years.

So no worries about people fleeing; there's always more where they came from.  To socialists, people are always just "matter," putty in the hands of socialist central planners, and if some flee, they've got replacement parts, with bottomless resources, so who cares?  They can always get more where they came from.  Never mind the little detail that the people fleeing are often immigrants themselves — the productive kind.

With an arrogant attitude like this, it certainly becomes easy to avoid fiscal reform, end the stranglehold of unions, and drop the choking regulations and lockdowns if there's an endless supply of people, doesn't it?  Who needs to adopt a moderate course or reduce the socialist strangleholds on the economy when there's no need to conserve people?  This is why the socialists are just going to keep getting crazier.

Mickey Kaus forecast that it would happen and was not surprised:

THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG: "'What’s going to really save New York is immigrants,' says [Andrew] Hacker"... While lots of New Yorkers are leaving, 'out there in Bangalore and Ukraine and Natal, there are people who want to be New Yorkers' who will gladly take their place." https://t.co/HcA5S4IIH8

— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) August 24, 2020

As usual, he got it right.  It's pretty obvious they'll glom onto this narrative more as a means of avoiding any address of their socialist failures.  Socialists never ever say they're sorry.

Image credit: Colin Keigher via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5.