New York: The Empire State Strikes Back.

If there was ever a Northern state that Southern states could point to as an example of why companies should move south it was New York. High taxes, many taxes, high rents, complicated regulations, overlapping jurisdictions of regulators--if it irritated business, it was found in New York.

For awhile in the 1970s, '80s and early 1990s, businesses that had finally tired of the increasing burdens responded by moving out and south. In the late 1990s, however, the Empire State struck back, using the same tactics that worked so well for the Southern states. Over the last se