And yet I believe it is considered the capital of the modern world in some sense, isn't it? (My perception as someone who's never visited the NE US). You choose to live there, or at least chose to live there for quite a long time as you said, so there must be some reason.
NY state is consistently ranked 2nd after California for the # of residents leaving. New York saw a net loss of over 75 thousand families last year.
Immigration helps offset those numbers a bit, because like you said people see NY(C) as the capital and plenty of people still want to live there.
Deterioration happens slowly and builds up over time. Humans are very resilient and adaptive to things getting worse (as every war has shown). When things happen slowly you don't notice how bad it is and forget what is lost. The older (usually conservative) people who notice the deterioration are often dismissed as cranks, boomers, out of touch, etc. So immigrants/young college kids still flock to NY and start building a life there before noticing that living there as an adult is way harder than it should be.
Moving states typically requires things to get really bad and people often don't understand the cause/effect of shitty gov and deteriorating cultures.
