Opinion

The Robin Hood syndrome

Gov. Cuomo and the 96 percent of lawmakers who backed this month’s millionaires tax should be tickled by a new Rockefeller Institute of Government report.

The study shows a massive shift of state revenues from Downstate to Upstate: Folks in the city shipped some $6 billion more to Albany than they got back in state spending in 2010.

Surburbanites forked over up to $8 billion more than was sent back.

City and suburban pols were protesting the imbalance yesterday — but it’s hard to understand why. After all, they virtually all voted for Cuomo’s millionaires-tax deal — it robs the rich to succor everybody else — which is pretty much the mechanism driving those state-aid imbalances.

The city and the ’burbs are targeted precisely because of their deep pockets; average incomes are higher Downstate than Upstate. Albany raids them simply because — as Willie Sutton put it — that’s where the money is.

The millionaires tax, which goes into effect Jan. 1, slaps wealthier folks with whopping 30 percent tax hikes, while cutting rates by a smaller amount for those who make less.

Which will mean yet more dollars flowing from the city and suburbs, where more millionaires live, to Upstate.

And so it goes.

But shifts have consequences.

And if Cuomo & Co. deny that, they should look at recent unemployment rates.

Fact is, 43 states saw drops in joblessness last month. Tax-happy New York was one of just three where unemployment grew.

Taxes aren’t all that’s to blame — but they’re a huge part of the problem: Combined state and local levies here top those everywhere else in America. And squeezing the wealthy, the job-creators, just pushes them to lower-tax states.

Unemployment soon follows.

Alas, pretty soon so many will have fled that New York will have a real problem: Who will be left for the Robin Hoods to steal from?