You might have read this article in the Times which reports on how cities around the country are desperately trying to attract the young, particularly the educated young. The reason: with the nation's aging demographics, we are entering an era of skilled labor shortage, and whoever gets the educated young gets jobs, income, and economic activity.
I have also heard this issue raised in Upstate New York, but here the concern about losing the young isn't about jobs and business, it is about "the tax base." In New York, you see, we have the richest senior benefits anywhere, but prefer to exempt seniors from taxes, so someone has to be available to pay relatively more and get relatively less.
In New York City, which has not even provided decent public schools despite the highest overall tax burden (including the local income tax), the suckers keep coming. And it's a good thing, because those schools have been generating relatively little skilled labor over the past 30 years. Their goal has been to keep the purported future felons off the street while freeing up money for schools elsewhere, and pensions for those leaving. And while past NYC public employees retired with rich pensions, government elsewhere come calling to recruit away the competent, given the way newer hires have been screwed.
The willing victims have been fewer Upstate and in the surburbs. Good thing for them that state school aid is allocated on the basis of jobs, so the more the school districts hire, the more New York City's share of school aid is cut. After all, eventually there will be no children in the schools. If they can't tax their own younger generations to pay for pensions and health benefits, they can always come after the city. Again.
The search for victims will resume in the next economic downturn and fiscal crisis. Expect other places to come calling after the state rounds up the usual suspects. We can only hope by then the massive generational inequities at the federal level will make our comparative disadvantage look small. Then I can tell my kids they'll be screwed everywhere, so they might as well stay here.