NY v FL

NY State has a $254 billion dollar budget and 20 million people. Florida has $116 billion dollar budget with 23 million people. NY state is $180 billion in debt and Fl is $15 billion. The NY State constitution requires the state to have balanced budget yet the state is $180 billion in debt. How is this possible. New York can be in debt despite requiring a balanced budget due to a combination of factors, including the use of "backdoor borrowing" by public authorities, deferring obligations, and reliance on one-time budget maneuvers to achieve balance. These maneuvers allow the state to appear balanced in one year while shifting obligations to future years, ultimately contributing to the overall debt burden The result is that the people are taxed much higher in New York and more than 100,000 move out of the state each year. Conversely 350,000 people move to Florida each year. If you just divide the budget by the number of people living in the state you see that each resident of NY pays $12,700 in tax while each person in Florida pays $7,800. The budget is so high in NY because they provide benefits to garner votes and they cannot change that for fear of losing power. Thus, they are on a downward spiral as people leave and those who remain will see their taxes increase. As Ben Franklin said, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury