New York's budget doesn't work without the finance hub. At all.

FIRE (Finance, insurance, real estate) generates more than 60% of NYC's wages, and an even more disproportionate share of its taxes, due to NYC's progressive tax structure.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2019/article/recent-trends-in-employment-and-wages-in-nyc-finance-and-insurance-sector.htm#:~:text=Finance%20and%20insurance%20generates%20more,to%20the%20city's%20tax%20base. https://twitter.com/beyerstein/status/1295090569203593216

If finance moved, and took the workers with it, the immediate effect would be to make New York City's basic operations unsustainable, much less its gigantic welfare state, without an immediate bailout from New York State.

However, since New York State is almost as lopsidedly dependent on FIRE for tax revenue, that bailout would not be possible, much less forthcoming.

To be clear, I am super skeptical of the apocalyptic narratives. But if you are a New Yorker dreaming of saying "good riddance" to finance, think again. That wouldn't have worked in the 1970s, and the NYC economy was way better diversified in the 1970s.

Also, if you're saying that no one will ever leave NYC--the city's population shrank for decades, even when it was a lot less convenient to leave the city. I'm skeptical, but it's not impossible.

Big cities have big operating costs, and when a serious outflow starts, the death spiral sets in as taxes have to keep hiking--or services decreasing--to cover fixed costs of things like pensions and union contracts, utilities, etc.

Crime goes up, people who thought of themselves as "lifelong New Yorkers" start to feel the lure of "Lifelong somewhere elsers".

And the last time this happened, broadband wasn't nearly as good.

I basically think agglomeration effects will eventually put NYC back together, but it's also possible that broadband is a discontinuity similar to the car. Especially when you consider that cities have been fed by two groups--young people and immigrants--who are getting scarcer.

One more thing, and I cannot emphasize this enough:

(WHISPERS) All the Boomers telling you how awesome New York was before gentrification are really telling you how awesome it was to be 25. Which is, to be fair, completely awesome, and if you are 25, please try to enjoy it.

I mean, I also liked New York better before it gentrified. I'm just aware that this might have *something* to do with the fact that I was sixteen and my joints didn't hurt.