Try this with an income tax estimator. You need FICA, state, local, federal etc. people often underestimate all of this when they are tossing tax rates around.

Effective tax rate for a single earner of 150,000 in NYC with no extra deductions is a bit over 32%.

Remember that the before-tax delta here gets applied at the marginal rate, so it's always going to be knocked down a fair bit for higher earners; the net impact will be smaller.

Anyway I assumed above leaving NYC for somewhere else in NY. It's easy to come up with scenarios where you might actually take home more with the pay cut (e.g. SF, CA -> Houston, TX). Housing costs there would be way lower (less than 1/2?).

There’s a myth about California’s sky high taxes. Looking at the overall tax burden (sales, property, income, etc) as a percent of income, CA doesn’t really even crack the top 10 states.

California figures are distorted by existing long term property owners effectively getting a windfall at the expense of more recent property owners.

This is not true, California does not have the highest tax rate in the nation.

The word “rate” is important here.