Hochul’s Blame Game Backfires

New York’s governor is begging millionaires to come home, while the numbers quietly show that most of them never left — and the real drama is how she explains it.

Story Snapshot

Hochul blames Donald Trump’s tax changes and COVID for a “millionaire exodus.”
Academic and state data say tax hikes barely moved the rich at all.
Remote work and the pandemic briefly loosened New York’s grip, then trends snapped back.
Conservative media frames Hochul as “begging” while she insists taxes on the rich are high enough.

How Hochul Turned a Budget Gap into a Blame Game

Governor Kathy Hochul now tells wealthy former New Yorkers that the state needs them back to fund “generous social programs,” because the tax base has been “eroded.” She points to two villains: Donald Trump’s 2017 cap on the State and Local Tax deduction, and the chaos of COVID. Her story is simple and emotional. Washington changed the rules, the pandemic hit hard, and rich families with Palm Beach condos decided New York was no longer worth the double tax hit.

Hochul’s words matter here. She flatly said, “Back then a big driver of people leaving… was when the Donald Trump administration and Congress got rid of the State and Local Tax deduction. All of a sudden, everybody in New York paid higher taxes.” She adds that remote work “changed everything” because high earners were once “captives” to Manhattan offices but could now take their six-figure jobs to Texas or Florida with a click. This is her core claim: outside shocks broke a system she wants to keep.

Data Shows a Trickle, Not a Stampede of Millionaires

The problem for Hochul’s narrative is that the hard numbers tell a calmer story. A detailed Fiscal Policy Institute report shows that high-income migration out of New York surged during the pandemic, then largely returned to pre-COVID levels by 2022. Before COVID, only about two out of every 1,000 top earners left New York in a year, a rate far below lower-income residents. That is hardly a mass flight. A separate fact sheet found no statistically meaningful jump in millionaire departures after the 2017 SALT cap or the 2021 state tax hike.

Even more awkward for the “tax hell” storyline, more than 75 percent of wealthy New Yorkers who left during the pandemic went to other high-tax states like Connecticut, New Jersey, and California. That is the opposite of the simple “everyone went to Florida” picture. National research backs this up: one widely cited analysis found only about 0.3 percent of millionaires moved to a lower-tax state in a year, and there was “no statistically significant evidence” that tax rates drive serious millionaire migration. Those who leave usually move for jobs, family, or lifestyle, not just a line item on a return.

Millionaires Stayed Put, and Their Tax Bills Got Bigger

Hochul warns publicly about a shrinking tax base, yet state revenue records show that millionaires did not collapse into a mass escape after New York raised top rates. New York media and policy analysts report that millionaires now provide roughly half of all personal income tax revenue, up from about 40 percent before the 2021 hike. The New York Times noted that the city’s millionaire population has actually grown over the past decade, even as working-class and middle-income residents leave under the weight of high costs.

This gap between fear and fact is striking. From a conservative common-sense view, it looks like New York did what progressive governments often do: raise taxes on high earners, promise large social programs, and then panic when even a small slice of those high earners start testing the exits. Yet the large majority stayed anyway. The real migration story is more about regular families escaping rent, crime, and cost of living, while the rich mostly swallow the bill and stay put.

Remote Work, Florida, and the Politics of Blame

Remote work did open a door, and some rich New Yorkers walked through it. Office badge swipes fell by almost 90 percent in big cities when COVID hit. High earners who could work from anywhere suddenly had real options, and many tested warmer, lower-tax destinations. Hochul herself admits New York now competes with states that “impose less tax on their businesses and individuals,” and that remote work makes moving easier. This is the clearest place where her story matches the data: the pandemic briefly broke old anchors.

New York's share of millionaires dropped 8.7% in just over a decade, and Hochul's excuse is to blame everyone but herself.

When they leave, you pay higher taxes to make up the difference.

Kathy Hochul made us the most overtaxed state in America.

I'll fix what she broke and… pic.twitter.com/oQvLNZTFzd

— Bruce Blakeman (@NassauExec) July 17, 2026

But the surge faded. By early 2023, millionaire migration patterns had mostly reverted to the old normal. That makes Hochul’s push to blame Trump’s SALT change or to treat remote work as a permanent structural break look more like political cover than sober analysis. Conservative outlets seize on the contradiction. They replay her 2022 line telling opponents to “jump on a bus” to Florida, then contrast it with today’s plea for the rich to leave Florida and “come back home” to fund her programs. From that lens, she drove wealth away with rhetoric and policy, then blamed everyone else when the budget got tight.

Why This Fight Matters Beyond New York

The clash over millionaire migration in New York fits a larger pattern in American fiscal politics. Governors in high-tax states often argue that federal policy or one-time shocks, not their own tax decisions, push wealth out. Academic work on tax reform finds that major changes usually reflect politics more than pure economics and that tax cuts for the rich tend to raise inequality without strong growth gains. For many conservatives, that reinforces the core belief that states should focus on stable, simple taxes and safe, livable cities instead of chasing ever-higher rates to fund sprawling programs.

New York is now a test case. The evidence says millionaires are mostly still there, paying more, while everyday earners quietly leave. Hochul’s choice to blame Trump and COVID rather than confront New York’s own tax and cost structure may play well with her base, but it dodges the hard question: how much can you lean on the top one percent before they stop feeling “patriotic” and start feeling foolish? For readers watching from other states, that question is coming to a capitol near you.