WONDER LAND
Blue-State Pols
Are Emptying
Their Own States
The governor can be recalled, but will the people return?
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, August 29, 2003 12:01 a.m.
The most significant voting bloc in California's famous recall election isn't Hispanics or angry male Democrats but the people who were so eager to weigh in that they've already voted--with their feet. According to a report out this month from the U.S. Census Bureau, an astounding 2,204,500 Californians threw in the towel from 1995 to 2000 and highballed it out of the "Golden State." The state's net migration figure for the period is minus-755,536, and would be worse if Latin American immigrants didn't still drop in for a look. This is the first time the net migration number for California has ever gone negative.
We in New York should be so lucky to have a chance to recall our profligate pols. The Census figures make those of us staying in the "Empire State" look like the nation's biggest saps: Some 1,600,725 shrewd subjects of Albany's empire saw in the late 1990s that the pols were blowing the revenue surge out the window and escaped ahead of the recent tax hikes passed to close the inevitable deficit. Because so many former New Yorkers understood the meaning of present-discounted non-value, the state took first place in net migration loss: minus-874,248. The bureau says New Yorkers fled to every state in the Union except Nebraska and the District of Columbia. Don't expect this datum to show up in the welcoming speeches by George Pataki and Mike Bloomberg when the GOP holds its weirdly inappropriate convention in Manhattan next year.
If you look down the Census Bureau's coming-and-going column nearby, the consistent breakdown of Democratic blue-state population losers and Republican red-state gainers is striking (there are exceptions; Oregon and Washington state gained, while Louisiana lost). This may leave the blue states bluer than ever, but not very pleasant places to live if their most industrious, motivated citizens are loading up one-way U-Hauls.
It's well known that Arizona and Nevada are growth states, but the numbers for places generally thought to be mostly desert are impressive: Arizona's net gain is 316,148; Nevada's is 233,934.
The economies of California, New York and Illinois have been supported for years by inflows of foreign-born immigrants, and they still come. But this census shows large net losses even of recent immigrants in these three blue states. Almost certainly these are the most motivated, successful new arrivers, who know a lot about maximizing their gains.
When the Los Angeles Times published a story on the outflow, it didn't have much trouble identifying the reason: The exodus is economic. In the world's stalest states, such as Germany or Japan, people faced with cost-of-living waters rising to choking levels turn numb and go nowhere. But here in the U.S. moving on is a tradition, and today we have Web sites to reveal a suitable refuge from state political cultures intent on keeping the spending and tax spigot open.
Monstermoving.com lets you discover relative buying power if you lived somewhere else. Let's type in L.A. and Tucson, just next door: "A salary of $30,000 in Los Angeles has the same buying power that a salary of $13,448 has in Tucson." For Las Vegas the figure is $13,241. If on top of this they elect a Gray Davis governor, why stay?
New Yorkers' third-favorite refugee camp is North Carolina. Easy to see why: You've got to earn $45,000 in the Big Apple to buy what $7,191 gets in Durham. As the Census report dryly puts it: "Five times as many people moved from New York to North Carolina as moved in the opposite direction." Yes, retirees go to Florida, but the size of the flow is mind-boggling; in five years, 308,000 New Yorkers went there. It is now economically irrational for a middle-class person to retire in New York City.
If owning a home is central to the American dream, the blue states are becoming a nightmare. Realtor.com lets you learn why the dream is turning red: a three-bedroom house that costs $285,000 in L.A. is $155,725 in Tucson.
New York City's hostility to 20-something apartment seekers, the seed-corn of its economy, is legendary. But a two-bedroom apartment goes for $760 in Richmond, Va., and $895 in Nashville, Tenn. For those prices you can't sleep on the street in New York. Many young New Yorkers spend 50% of their before-tax income on rent. Of the 10 states with the highest combined tax burden, eight are blue states, according to the Tax Foundation.
The ACCRA cost-of-living index, run out of George Mason University, provides another telling comparison. These are fourth-quarter 2002 numbers with 100.0 as the U.S. average.
Blues: Los Angeles, 137.8; San Francisco, 182.3; Boston, 135.5; and always-frightening New York (Manhattan), 216.2.
Reds: Phoenix, 95.1; Tampa, 90.5; Atlanta, 98.1; Houston, 90.8. There are exceptions; you can live like an average American and still be a Democrat by living in Pittsburgh, at 1.5 below the national average.
Democratic dictum holds that all this is necessary to support "needs." But what is the point if only the uppermost-middle-class can afford their idea of Eden?
Arnie Schwarzenegger should challenge Cruz Bustamante to explain why Hispanics should vote for a party piling cost after cost on their lives. This week, the state Democratic Senate President Pro Tem John Burton of San Francisco gave the answer: "You can't walk into a restaurant and have a meal without paying for it, without washing dishes." Gee, now you've got to wash your own dishes in California's restaurants? How bad can it get?
Will the last person leaving the blue states please turn out the lights.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com. |
