Subject: Re: New Yorkers looking for the exits
I have lived in Brooklyn, NY all of my life in a neighborhood which is not only vibrantly multicultural, but offers the ultimate in commercial convenience within walking distance. I have grown up in this sort of environment with my parent's friends. my classmates and my working colleagues coming from all over the world. The cultural options, the commercial diversity and the medical care options in the City, hen taken as a gestalt, are peerless in the US.

I have also had the good fortune to have extensively traveled, both through North America and abroad for over five decades (visiting well over 100 countries and traveling extensively through dozens of them).

I admit to being greatly concerned about the recent changes being made and promoted by US politicians on many different levels, including threats to changing my appreciation of living in the US. Recent changes in NYC politics have threatened to increase the, already overburdensome, taxes levied on my income. I believe, between the two, the specific NYC threat is quantifiable as a tax metric (as I don't believe it will dramatically change the social structure of the city), but the national threat is more existential and difficult to get past a shift in "quality" and being a more esoteric threat. Note that those who did not grow up in the City, but simply moved here as adults likely feel otherwise.

So, here's the problem: There are no locals in the US which can offer the convenience and benefits of living in NYC (though at the cost of high taxes). And, while there are cities elsewhere which can offer parallel diversity of attributes (say, Paris, Singapore, Berlin and a small handful of others), all of them have other factors which would make them more challenging for me personally to live there. So, so far, it seems that staying put is more beneficial than relocating, but I suspect, if the decision was made that I "can't take it anymore", it would involve moving out of the country before moving out of the City.

Those who are now moving out of the City are largely doing so because they don't feel their high taxes are being beneficial to them personally, or have been swayed by "news" in their own silos, but I feel the risks of change in the City's social fabric are way overblown.

Jeff