HEY RUBE.

 Hey remember when everyone was fleeing New York because of crime and riots and bums etc.?

New York City adds 629,000 people, defying predictions of its decline.

New York City has grown by more than 629,000 people — or nearly 8 percent — since 2010, reaching 8.8 million and defying predictions that its population was on the decline...

But city officials said the increase was at least in part a result of getting a better count.

In recent years, New York’s Department of City Planning, which supplies data to the Census Bureau, added 265,000 housing units that had been missing from the bureau’s list, including both “hard to find” and newly constructed units.

“This allowed the Census Bureau to enumerate half a million people which they would have otherwise missed,” said Arun Peter Lobo, New York City’s chief demographer. “Because we told them, they knew exactly where to go"...

“The decline of New York City has been foretold very often — incorrectly,” [Arun Peter Lobo, New York City’s chief demographer] said. “I understand that this is largely a pre-Covid population, but adding over 600,000 people is like adding the population of Miami. It’s huge.”

Conservatives have been saying for years that New York is finished because they saw some people renting U-Hauls in Manhattan, and they really got into it during the pandemic. But the plain fact is, New York City remains very popular, as is evidenced by its high rents and prices -- which you'd think free-market rightwingers would consider a sign that people want what New York offers, if they weren't totally full of shit. 

Telling their rubes that cities are unlivable because they're full of liberals who vote for Democrats is ancient rightwing shtick, and even when crime goes down they stick to their story. Well. It's a big, beautiful country with something for everyone, and New York City is used to haters. 

UPDATE: Oh, right, on Fridays I usually release some Roy Edroso Breaks It Down stories, so here you go: An ad for the social media platform for conservatives who really want unlimited free speech -- Bunkr!