Sunday, April 19, 2015

Blue State Refugees Invade Red States






As a transplanted Yankee, I can attest to the paucity of jobs and opportunities in a blue state.  I left many years ago, and vowed I would never live in another one again.  To this day, I meet blue state refugees who relate similar experiences I had decades ago.  Nothing seems to change.

Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of New York license plates in North Carolina.  I can only hope they’re passing through or just visiting.  If they’re here to stay, we can only pray they’re not a bunch of teat squawkers looking to leech off of productive citizens.

The citizens of North Carolina kicked the progressives out of power, and with good reason.  They tried to change the Old North State into a Yankee-esque hellhole.  However, an influx of blue state refugees with redistributive tendencies could change this mini-renaissance.  I’m sure the totalitarians seeing this mass migration are licking their chops in anticipation of regaining power.



One must ask, why do blue states fail?  Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation wrote an article on this very subject.  Here is an excerpt:

 So, if income redistribution policies are the solution to shrinking the gap between rich and poor, why do they fail so miserably in the states?
The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.
California is the prototypical example. It has the highest tax rates of any state. It has very generous welfare benefits. Many of its cities have a high minimum wage. But day after day, the middle class keeps leaving. The wealthy areas such as San Francisco and the Silicon Valley boom. Yet the state has nearly the highest poverty rate in the nation. The Golden State, alas, has become the inequality state.
In a new report called “Rich States, Poor States” that I write each year for the American Legislative Exchange Council with Arthur Laffer and Jonathan Williams, we find that five of the highest-tax blue states in the nation — California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois — lost some 4 million more U.S. residents than entered these states over the last decade (see chart). Meanwhile, the big low-tax red states — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia — gained about this many new residents.
 It’s too bad red states are unable to form their own immigration policies.  Australia would have nothing on us. 

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