1. High state income taxes.
2. New York City local income tax.
3. The banning of fracking to extract plentiful natural gas in the center of the Marcellus Shale in upper New York state.
Explains why people are leaving that state in droves. Even the big Wall Street firms based in the New York City area are moving their operations to New Jersey, of all things.
I really think that we could see a movement by the counties of upper New York state to separate out into their own state so they could start to extract out natural gas (and possibly crude oil) using fracking, which would result in a major economic boom an revive every town along I-90 from Buffalo all the way to Albany.
Most of the people moving in do not use movers but are coming as illegal immigrants with literally the shirt on their back. So the net population is not going down. The blue states and blue cities are where the benefits are being handed out.