Michael Barone Schools Befuddled Lefty

Michael Barone is a gentlman, which is, of course, why he would never say that liberal journalist Timothy Noah might just be the stupidest guy writing putative political commentary today. 

But he could.

Because Noah scratches his head at the single most prominent and obvious demographic trend playing out in these United States over the last several decades - people are leaving the Northeast.  Or, as George Will has pointed out, with ostensible precision, the country is moving south and west at a rate of 1/2 mile per day.

Rather Barone restates the well understood fact that businesses and people have been leaving the Northeast for decades to escape the special amalgam of high taxes, heavy regulation, failing schools, high cost of living, corruption, unionism and crime that Northeastern liberals have cooked up for their fellow man for decades (with a brief and modest 20 year interlude courtesy of Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg).

It’s not puzzling at all. The movement from high-tax, high-housing-cost states to low-tax, low-housing-cost states has been going on for more than 40 years, as I note in my new book “Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics.”

From 1970 to 2010, the population of New York state rose from 18 million to 19 million. In that same period, the population of Texas grew from 11 million to 25 million.

The picture is even starker if you look at major metro areas. The New York metropolitan area, including counties in New Jersey and Connecticut, rose from 17.8 million in 1970 to 19.2 million in 2010 — up 8 percent. In that time, the nation grew 52 percent.

In the same period, the four big metro areas in Texas — Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin — grew from 6 million to 15.6 million, up 160 percent.

Contrary to Noah’s inference, people don’t move away from opportunity. They move partly in response to economic incentives, but also to pursue dreams and escape nightmares.

I've seen it first hand.  I've seen numerous friends, co-workers and neighbors move away over the years and emphatically call it "escaping."  I work in finance, so I've seen the rest of country pick the NYC finance industry apart and take tens of thousands of our jobs (especially Dallas).  I see our infrastructure crumbling all around us as there is no money left after the unions gobble all the tax dollars up.  In most cases, you'd be crazy to start or run a business in New York.  Same with most of the Northeast's moribund urban centers.  Largest city in Connecticut?  Shithole.  Providence?  Bankrupt.  Philly?  Scarily dangerous.  Baltimore?  Doubly scary.  Boston?  Bureaucratic hellhole.  Jersey?  Newark at one end, Camden/Trenton at the other.  (That's coming from a proud Jersey native.) 

That's not to say that life can't be pretty good here.  It can if you make good money and are hanging on to a job in the reduced core of our two main industries - finance and media.  For the aspirant middle class though it's mostly a losing proposition.