The big news in New York this morning is going to be the release of a report called “Engine Failure” by a group called the Center for an Urban Future. The report, which is about the future of New York, is embargoed, but one of its co-authors, Joel Kotkin, was out yesterday with a piece in the Washington Post under the headline, “Bye-Bye, Big Apple.” It argued that New York’s power and influence are fading, and that jobs, and culture, are moving to places like Omaha, Neb.; Orlanda, Fla.; Des Moines, Iowa; and Fargo, N.D.

Okay, stop laughing. As New Yorkers ourselves, we know that the idea of a place like Fargo or Des Moines competing with our city, the world’s greatest, is the sort of thing that someone who lives in Los Angeles, like Mr. Kotkin, might write for a local newspaper published in a sleepy company town like Washington. But the following facts should be enough to wipe even a trace of a chuckle off the face of even the smuggest New Yorker. Mr. Kotkin reports, for instance, that “manufacturing jobs dropped 3.2 percent nationwide during the 1990s, but more than 33 percent in New York.” Mayor Bloomberg has stated that manufacturing jobs don’t belong in New York, so we can put that category aside for a moment.

How about retail? Mr. Kotkin writes, “Locating in New York was once critical for major retailers. Today, not one of the nation’s top 20 retail firms is headquartered there.” Even Federated Department stores, parent of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, has its headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Financial services? “Nearly 97 percent of all the nation’s growth in the securities industry since 1990 has taken place outside the city,” Mr. Kotkin writes. Big companies in general? “The number of Fortune 500 firms in New York was down to 39 in 2002, from 42 in 1999, 77 in 1979 and 140 in 1955,” Mr. Kotkin writes.

New Yorkers can agree that the city is a great place to live and work because of its cultural offerings, its round-the-clock public transportation, its parks, its lively street life, its low crime rate, the vibrancy of its immigrant communities, the easy access to international and national airline flights. But the statistics about job loss and economic growth cited by Mr. Kotkin are worth paying attention to. There was a time, after all, when Boston and Philadelphia thought of New York the way that we New Yorkers now think of Des Moines and Fargo. Writes Mr. Kotkin: “You can now hear decent music, or enjoy a good Italian meal, in Fargo and drink a more than passable cappuccino in virtually every second-tier city.”

But people and companies are not leaving New York for the music or the coffee. They are leaving because the tax and regulatory climates are friendlier elsewhere, and housing and real estate and labor costs are cheaper there. These tax and regulatory issues, real estate problems and labor costs stem from errors of policy and practice on the part of government at both the city and state level. There are ways to address these issues. These historic policy errors can be corrected. But the first step is for city and state governments to acknowledge that the problems exist, which is a discussion “Engine Failure” is no doubt designed to start.