Families and Businesses Keep Leaving New York

New York City has long been one of the world’s great economic engines. But since the Covid-19 pandemic, the city has become less dynamic, as surging housing costs and declining quality of life pushed strivers and businesses away. John Ketcham argues that if Gotham’s next mayor fails to improve New York’s value proposition, the city will continue to bleed residents—and tax revenue.

Ketcham presents an agenda for the next mayor to restore the city’s economic fortunes, such as using artificial intelligence to make City Hall more efficient and directing the savings to addressing quality-of-life issues. “With sensible policies,” he writes, “New York’s next mayor could make the city a place where young strivers, families, and businesses want to stay—not flee.”

In collaboration with the Sun Valley Policy Forum (SVPF), several luminaries from the Manhattan Institute will speak at this year’s SVPF Summer Institute, on July 1st and 2nd. This two-day conference retreat will be held in the premier mountain town of Sun Valley, Idaho. Reihan Salam (Manhattan Institute President), Jesse Arm (Manhattan Institute Executive Director of External Affairs & Chief of Staff), Heather Mac Donald (Thomas W. Smith Fellow and Contributing Editor of City Journal), and Senior Fellows Jason Riley and Abigail Shrier will be featured in the programming, along with other notable thought leaders. As a benefit to City Journal readers, Reserve ticket bundle registrations will be upgraded to the Bronze pass level, which includes access to a private cocktail party. For more information on the program, go here; to register with MI benefits, go here.

Fraud is a significant contributor to the ever-growing federal deficit. According to a 2024 study by the Government Accountability Office, it costs the federal government as much as $521 billion annually. Though the Elon Musk-launched DOGE is overshadowed right now by Musk and Donald Trump’s falling out, the effort nonetheless marks “a crucial first step toward restoring fiscal sanity in Washington,” writes Steven Malanga.

Fraud is only part of the equation. “The federal government is also rife with programs that run for decades, despite little or no success. For years, taxpayers have paid for antipoverty initiatives that don’t reduce poverty, social-welfare plans that don’t improve community flourishing, and job-training initiatives that don’t find people work.”

A next step, writes Malanga, could be to create a division within DOGE that would “rate the effectiveness of government social policy programs” and propose ending those that fail to make the cut.

In Why Nothing Works, former Democratic Party operative Marc Dunkelman argues that progressives are to blame for today’s governmental sclerosis, writing that they “abandoned efforts to draw power into the hands of power brokers and worked instead to diffuse authority—to push it down and out.”

Daniel DiSalvo notes that even though Dunkelman “gives short shrift to the fundamental tension in advocating for concentrated governmental power in a polarized democracy,” the book is still a “thought-provoking contribution.” Read his review.  

A Louisiana jury has fined Chevron $745 million in a case stemming from the company’s World War II-era crude oil production, which trial lawyers alleged caused environmental damage. Chevron argued that its actions were carried out under federal direction—as part of a contract to produce aviation fuel for the war effort—and that the case should therefore have been moved to a federal rather than a state court. So far, appeals courts have disagreed, allowing the judgment to stand.

As Ted Frank notes, dozens of similar suits are pending across Louisiana, with potential liabilities running into the tens of billions of dollars. He urges the Supreme Court to intervene—to restore federal jurisdiction, protect President Trump’s energy agenda, and shield consumers from the economic fallout of runaway state-level litigation.

“‘Woke’ means seeking the maximum publicity for a left-wing cause at the lowest possible cost to oneself, regardless of any effect on the cause. It is woke to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality because that attracts more cameras than standing during the national anthem, although it is hard to see how this prevents a cop from beating a suspect. It is woke to throw canned soup on famous artworks to try to persuade people to stop using petroleum because that gets more media than merely refraining from using petroleum. It is woke to glue oneself to a floor to protest the use of petroleum even though the glue you used is made from petroleum.”

Photo credits: Gary Hershorn / Contributor / Corbis News via Getty Images