Let liberalism self destruct in CA, NY and IL. Money shortfalls will crush these giant liberal bastions. CA is the first to implode. They think between banking and high tech they can sustain a liberal utopia. They are wrong. Generous entitlements, illegal immigrants, large state pensions cannot be sustained by high taxes. IL is next to fall. NY is a bit different. Gov Cuomo is trying to legalize fracking but he hasn’t figure out how to slip it by the environmentalists in his party yet. His state is being held up by NYC/Wall Street. The rest of the state is a industrial waste land being sustained locally by state/fed funded university towns.
Industry in upstate has been decimated for a few decades. What does Syracuse and Utica do that is economically useful? Rochester was dynamic when it had Eastman Kodak. You had GE and Corning upstate, You had IBM north of NYC making things. There is lots of agriculture in NY State. But you are right that state/fed money has made upstate university towsn into economic oasis's. Upstate gets skiing and other tourist dollars from NYC. They get taxes on second homes from NYC people