Bashing New York City has long been a popular pastime on the right. Conservatives routinely portray the Big Apple as a dystopian wasteland. And the bashing has reached a fever pitch since Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, announced multiple charges against Donald Trump. How dare Bragg pursue these cases, Republicans ask, when crime is running out of control on his home turf? But New York crime isn’t really out of control. As in many places, crime jumped during the pandemic, but it seems to be subsiding; although Republicans won’t believe it, crime in America’s safest big city remains much lower than crime in, say, Miami or Columbus, Ohio. Still, even before the pandemic there was a steady if not huge flow of people out of New York. Why were they leaving? It probably wasn’t crime, although perceptions can be at odds with reality. It probably also wasn’t taxes; I’ll get there in a minute. The biggest factor, almost surely, was and is the cost of housing. About perceptions:...
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