New York City is losing residents to other places because of the hardships the coronavirus pandemic has caused and because of rising taxes, but if the value for living in the city was restored, the city can recover, former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who is now running for mayor of New York City, said Monday.
The shift to people working from home is also affecting the city's economy, Yang told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "What we have to do is make it so that those families that have made New York City their home have their schools open, they can enjoy all of the opportunities here that you have taken advantage of for so long."
In New York City, he added, "it's all about the talent. If you feel you can move your organization to another place and have the same level of efficacy as an organization, that's the key differentiator. New York City has had the talent advantage for years and decades and that's what we have to preserve and, in some cases, recover."
Meanwhile, even though people might be able to "beam in" from anywhere, it is hard to build a business culture over Zoom, said the Democrat candidate.
"If you are trying to develop or climb or understand what the organization is about, you have to be around other people in that organization, and that is what New York City has provided for so many organizations big and small for years," Yang said. "That is still what New York City provides. It's very hard to have a young person develop remotely from day one."
New York Gov. Cuomo has proposed a budget that will raise the city's taxes to 14.7% for the city's highest earners, making their taxes the highest in the country, but Yang said there are other ways to generate revenue in the city.
"It has to be about reconstituting the value proposition, because the fact is there are people who have been paying higher taxes in New York City for a long time," he said. "It's not news to them that taxes are higher here . . . if New York were a country, it would be the 11th biggest economy in the world.
"A lot of organizations are place-based here that will be here for years to come. They're the ones trying to invest in the recovery."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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