blue state exodus | More Liberty

Blue State Exodus Now a Stampede

California Dreaming has transmogrified into the California nightmare

George Noga
Nov 17, 2024

Latest IRS data confirm the exodus of wealth and income from blue states is now a rout. Millions of Americans voted with their feet and wallets. The biggest losers in the past year of adjusted gross income are California $24B (billion), New York $14B, Illinois $10B, New Jersey $5B and Massachusetts $4B. The winners are Florida $36B, Texas $10B, South Carolina $5B, Tennessee $5B and North Carolina $5B.

man in blue t-shirt and blue denim shorts holding black dslr camera — Family packing up and leaving California

This post compares California and New York to Florida in key metrics and also addresses quality of life issues between red and blue state America.

California Versus Florida

The California dream is now the California nightmare. Compared to Florida electricity costs 200% to 300% more, while gas is $2 a gallon more. The median-priced home is double that of Florida. California taxes middle-income taxpayers at a higher rate than red states tax millionaires. Of course, Florida has no state income tax. Zoning restrictions, wacko environmentalism, climate madness and public sector unions run amok in the Golden State – not so in the free state of Florida.

In recent years FL gained over 1 million jobs while CA lost 100,000. Despite this, the CA unemployment rate is double that of FL. Small business taxes in CA have a top rate of 13.3% versus zero in FL. State and local taxes in CA are $10,000 per capita versus $5,400 in FL and per person spending in CA is $15,000 versus $8,800 in FL.

Every Californian owes $20,000 in unfunded pensions versus $5,000 in FL. Despite sky-high taxes, CA has a budget deficit of $50B, while FL has a surplus of $20B. CA spends 45% more per pupil on K-12 schools but, its test scores are much lower. CA has homelessness, open drug use, college riots, decriminalization of shoplifting, progressive prosecutors, and sanctuary status. FL has none of these.

New York Versus Florida

Refugees from progressive NY also are fleeing en masse to FL and it is easy to see why. A resident of Miami pays no (as in zip, nana, zero) state and local income tax while denizens of the big apple pay 14.8%. New Yorkers pay 8.875% sales tax versus 6.0% in Miami. Florida’s constitution caps residential property taxes, which are less than 1% compared to more than double in the Empire State.

NY spends twice as much as FL even though FL has 2.5 million more people. Florida’s economy is growing at twice the rate of NY and its unemployment rate is half that of NY. Estate taxes in NY are 16% while FL has no estate tax whatsoever. Incidentally, a moving van costs 500% more in New York.

Quality of life in NY and CA versus FL

Paying double (or more) in taxes in CA and NY (versus Florida) might be palatable if the money was spent to create la dolce vita for their citizens. Instead, they have used the money to create hell holes of toxic governance, sky-high taxes, identity politics, Kafkaesque regulation, stratospheric living costs, mandatory unionization, crumbling infrastructure, massive public debt, unfunded liabilities and tanking credit ratings.

CA and NY have failed union-run government schools that are petri dishes for dysfunction and social pathologies. Some independent think tanks rate FL schools best in America – and at less than half the cost of CA and NY. Recently FL enacted a universal school choice law empowering parents to choose the schools best for their children. In obeisance to uber-powerful teachers unions, CA and NY shuttered their schools for years causing irreparable harm. Florida quickly reopened schools. Unlike FL, NY and CA teach the 1619 Project, CRT and encourage children to question their gender – and even to begin transitioning without parental notification.

CA and NY are woke sanctuary states that tolerate homeless encampments and open purchase and use of drugs that have turned cities into open sewers. They decriminalize arson, shoplifting and looting while defunding police and eliminating cash bail. They pit their citizens against each other based on race, age, income and gender. Housing is scarce, dilapidated and expensive with rent control and eviction bans in place. Climate change madness runs amok doubling – or even tripling – the cost of energy. None of the above horrors are present in the free state of Florida.

Blue State Stampede Creates Vicious Circle

California, New York and other deep blue states are hemorrhaging billions and billions of dollars of tax base. This creates a vicious circle; the exodus of their most productive citizens leaves behind an even more progressive electorate that further raises taxes causing even more productive taxpayers to flee. Rinse and repeat.

A corollary of the blue state vicious circle is a red state virtuous circle. The massive influx of productive citizens, along with their tax base, results in a more libertarian electorate that permits red states to lower their taxes or provide more and better services causing an even bigger stampede from blue states. Rinse and repeat.

It is hard to see how the stampede ends. At some point a blue state collapse seems inevitable – following the storyline of Atlas Shrugged. For now, people are voting with their feet and wallets to escape blue state America, where safety, culture, civility and liberty go to die. Will the last person to leave CA and NY kindly shut off the lights?

© 2024 George Noga
More Liberty – Less Government, Post Office Box 916381
Longwood, FL 32791-6381, Email: mllg@cfl.rr.com

People render their home world uninhabitable and then move on to despoil other worlds.

Independence Day 2021

By: George Noga – July 4, 2021

MLLG’s annual Fourth of July posting, Independence Day, is both the most popular and most forwarded of all time. We have updated the story for 2021. For readers needing a refresher, the 1996 movie Independence Day featured extraterrestrials who made their home planet unfit for habitation, failed to learn from it and invaded Earth with the intent to ravage it before moving on to savage yet other pristine worlds.

For 60 years liberals have ravished and ransacked blue states via toxic governance. They have made them as uninhabitable as would marauding ETs. They despoiled blue states via crippling taxation, Kafkaesque regulation, sky-high living costs, mandatory unionization, and crumbling infrastructure. Their failed government schools are petri dishes for every dysfunction and social pathology. They indoctrinate students with fake history and instill values antithetical and hostile to those of their parents.

Progressives render blue states uninhabitable with rampant crime, gun control, massive debt, corruption, unfunded liabilities and tanking debt ratings. They tolerate public homelessness, drug use and human filth. They decriminalize arson, looting and theft while defunding police and elevating rioters above law-abiding citizens. They abolish bail, release dangerous criminals and create sanctuary cities and states; they pit Americans against one another based on race, income, gender and ethnicity.

Blue state horrors include stagnating economies that are hemorrhaging people, jobs, tax base and red ink with hopelessly underfunded public pensions. Quality of life, happiness, civility, culture and freedom suffer. Housing is scarce, dilapidated and costly due to rent control, hyper-regulation, eviction bans and environmentalism run amok. Climate change wackiness makes energy more costly. The pandemic response was bollixed due to an orgy of big brother over-regulation and obeisance to teachers union demands that disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable Americans.

The failure of blue state governance is so radioactive it reached critical mass, setting off a mass exodus. People are voting with their feet, fleeing these dystopian wastelands in droves – making beelines for red states. Each and every one of the blue state horrors listed supra is much less likely to exist in red state America, and if it does exist, it is much less extensive and virulent. Life in red state America is freer, more humanistic and, as measured by Gini coefficient, much happier. The hordes abandoning blue states love life in their new homes and none ever returns to blue state snake pits.

Inexplicably however, many (if not most) of these transplanted liberals fail to make the connection and continue to vote for the same pernicious, destructive policies that laid waste to their home states. They seem hellbent on transmogrifying red states into the veritable hell holes they desperately fled. They are no smarter or better then the aliens in the movie that go from one planet to another – destroying each one in turn.

I recall an old Florida cracker expression that if someone moved from Florida to Georgia, it would raise the IQ of both states. Something similar happens when progressives move from blue to red states – only they lower the IQ of both states.

There is one critical difference between the movie and the nascent progressive looting of red states. The aliens in the movie had the technology to move on to new worlds after sucking all the life out of their temporary homes. Where can we go once progressives finish their pillage and rape of what today is red state America?

Next on July 11th, the science behind manmade climate change is unsettled.

Click here to join our mailing list

More Liberty Less Government – mllg@cfl.rr.com – www.mllg.us