Voters flee to states with less government intrusion
Daniel Mitchell provides a bit of ground truth that we’ve recently seen demonstrated via the census numbers:
The world is a laboratory and different nations are public policy experiments. Not surprisingly, the evidence from these experiments is that nations with more freedom tend to grow faster and enjoy more prosperity. Nations with big governments, by contrast, are more likely to suffer from stagnation. The same thing happens inside the United States. The 50 states are experiments, and they generate considerable data showing that small government states enjoy better economic performance. But because migration between states is so easy (whereas migration between nations is more complicated), we also get very good evidence based on people “voting with their feet.” Taxation and jobs are two big factors that drive this process.
Seats were gained by two types of states – those with "right to work" laws and states without income tax. The states with relatively low income taxes also gained.
…growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England. Altogether, 35 percent of the nation’s total population growth occurred in these nine non-taxing states, which accounted for just 19 percent of total population at the beginning of the decade.
For the “we have the lowest taxes in the world” bunch that continue to claim our taxes should be even higher, these numbers should drive the point home. Americans are indeed voting with their feet and they’re fleeing to states that encourage vs. discourage businesses (and thus the creation of jobs) and states which don’t tax the income of job holders. Unsurprisingly those states are mostly found in the South where free markets and free people are concepts that aren’t esoteric thought exercises, but something which those that live there both desire and demand.
Certainly that doesn’t mean the South is perfect by any means. It’s just much better than the rest of the country when it comes to those two things that people hold to be important – enough so that they’re moving there in record numbers to take advantage of the business climate. Texas, for instance, picked up 4 House seats. Florida 2. The rest of the South, except Louisiana (the Katrina effect), picked up one each.
This is another indicator of why I see Democrats and their agenda having problems in 2012. That message hasn’t yet sunk in. Whether it will or not, remains to be seen. But to this point, they’re still a “big government” party. Republicans seem, at least on the surface, to understand what the voters said the last election. Spine, however, is an ever fleeting commodity in Washington, and if they – as they usually do – buy into this “need” for “bipartisanship”, then they’re fools and they’ll fail. Bipartisanship is vastly oversold. If ever the GOP played hardball, now is the time.
Of course, the other side of that is if the GOP succeeds in some small way and convince President Obama to sign those victories into law, Obama will obviously try to claim he’s the reason it became a law. A little reflective glory. Spin cycles will be on overdrive and the GOP must be as transparent as possible during this next Congressional period so any such occurrence will reflect favorably on them and not the President.
Let’s be upfront here – we need Obama playing golf permanently in 2013.
Anyway, the demographics of the new census and the why and wherefores of the population shift were just too interesting to pass off. Daniel Mitchell then asks the most salient of questions in conclusion:
This leaves us with one perplexing question. If we know that pro-market policies work for states, why does the crowd in Washington push for more statism?
The one word we all know and loath, of course – power.
~McQ