Is Texas the answer to what ails New York’s economy? While Mayor Adams touts a new Green Economy Action Plan to boost the city’s anemic job growth, the head of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, says the Empire State would be better off following the example set by low-regulation, low-tax Texas. “They don’t want business,” is how Mr. Dimon sums up New York, urging the Empire State to “look at other states, which are almost completely opposite.”The remarks by the chairman and chief executive of America’s biggest bank came during a visit earlier this week to Texas where he “applauded,” Bloomberg News reports, the Lone Star State’s “business-friendly policies.” Touring a new training facility at Houston, he explained that “mayors and governors” often call him to ask “Jamie, what can we do to get more employees?” The answer, Mr. Dimon said, is “you can look at other states.”The Chase chief practices what he preaches. JPMorgan now has upwards of 30,000 employees in Texas, compared with fewer than 29,000 in New York, a decline, Bloomberg reports, from 35,000. Driving the shift are “Texas’s lack of an income tax and its light regulatory touch, which,” Bloomberg says, “have prompted companies to relocate or expand in the state.” Mr. Dimon’s bank is among other corporate titans migrating Texasward.Electric automaker Tesla and investment giant Charles Schwab are among those who pulled up stakes on the Coast and relocated their headquarters to Texas. Caterpillar, too, made the move to Texas from another high-tax state, Illinois. It’s hard to blame them. The Tax Foundation ranks California among the bottom — 48th — of the states in its State Business Climate Tax Index. Low-tax Texas is rated 13th. New York, for its part, stands at 49th on the list. That helps to explain why New York City’s economy is flailing. Some four years after the pandemic, the city has almost recovered the nearly a million jobs lost to shutdowns and other disruptions. For now, the City asks, “the question is how fast the city’s economy will add to its 4.7 million job base.” The prospects are bleak. Under the best-case estimate, the city will add but 88,000 jobs this year, the City says — half the national growth rate.Plus also, too, regardless of one’s views on the 45th president, it surely can’t help New York’s reputation as a business-friendly state to see what is happening in the courts to Mr. Trump’s venerable family company, which helped inspire the fabric of the city. The Trump Organization faces a punitive $464 million judgment — and possible oblivion — in what looks like a politically motivated prosecution by the Attorney General.Mr. Adams, for his part, has his priorities backwards. Instead of cutting taxes and regulations to lure private enterprise, he is talking about more spending. On Tuesday he announced $100 million for a “Climate Innovation Hub” at Brooklyn and another $725 million to “build a green economy ecosystem” to add “green-collar jobs” here. So while Gotham dithers on job growth, Texas is eating New York’s lunch. Time for Mr. Adams to place a call to Mr. Dimon.
