Red v. Blue Seismic shifts in economic and demographic power are occurring across America.
Category: News & Politics
Via: donald-j-trump-fan-1 • 4 years ago • 55 commentsBy: Joel Kotkin, Wendell Cox
The demographic and economic comeback of the red states is powerful and quite real. People are moving where the jobs are and the cost of living is lower. We credit Trump with bringing jobs back that Obama and Clinton had no intention of doing. They were strengthening the bi coastal and big urban with policies and regulations designed to strengthen them while government and trade policies deliberately weakened Heartland flyover America. Now all of America is growing, the Heartland is catching up and only top down democrat progressive federal policies, laws, and regulations can harm the Heartland of America.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His latest book is The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us . Wendell Cox is the principal of Demographia, a public-policy consultancy, and a senior fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.
The political and cultural war between red and blue America may not be settled in our lifetimes, but it’s clear which side is gaining ground in economic and demographic terms. In everything from new jobs—including new technology employment—fertility rates, population growth, and migration, it’s the red states that increasingly hold the advantage.
Perhaps the most surprising development is on the economic front. Over the past decade, the national media , and much of academia, have embraced the notion that the future belonged to the high-tax, high-regulation economies clustered on the East and West Coasts. The red states have been widely dismissed, in the words of the New York Times , as the land of the “left behind.”
Yet the left-behind are catching up, as economic momentum shifts away from coastal redoubts toward traditionally GOP-leaning states. Just a few years ago, states like California, Massachusetts, and New York held their own, and then some, in measurements of income growth from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Now the fastest growth is concentrated in the Sunbelt and Great Plains. Texans’ income in the latest 2019 BEA estimates was up 4.2 percent, well above California’s 3.6 percent and twice New York’s 2.1 percent. The largest jumps—and this may matter a lot in 2020—took place in the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Iowa.
The same pattern is visible in overall job growth . Over the past decade, only two blue states—California and Washington—ranked in the Top Ten. Last year, according to estimates by the economic-analysis firm EMSI, only purplish Colorado made the top tier, which was led by Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, Texas, and Florida. These top states are now adding jobs at almost twice the rate of California and even more quickly than laggards like New York or New Jersey.
Without exception, the major blue states, even when they are doing well, usually have experienced slow population growth. Now some, notably New York, are actually losing population. California , once the growth beacon, is seeing virtually no growth: a state of almost 40 million gained a measly 50,000 residents last year.
Virtually all the states losing domestic migrants are deep blue. According to Census Bureau estimates, between 2010 and 2019, New York led the losing states, with a net domestic-migration loss of 1.379 million, followed by California (912,000), Illinois (856,000) and New Jersey (491,000). The big gainers were red, led by Florida, which gained 1.29 million, Texas (1.15 million), North Carolina (476,000), and Arizona (454,000). These states are often the destinations for blue-state refugees.
Some blue-state defenders downplay the demographic shift, though it's real enough: much of the migration is coming as a result of more people , notably millennials , ditching metropolitan areas with large and dense urban cores to more dispersed, and more affordable, urban locations. Data developed by William Frey of the Brookings Institution indicate that all of the ten metropolitan areas with the greatest millennial net migration from 2012 to 2017 were in the South and West, while a reverse youth movement has taken place in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. As millennials enter their thirties, many are seeking to nest in states where housing prices are lower. In markets such as Columbus, Atlanta, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Houston, house prices are from one-third to one-half, adjusted for incomes, lower than those in Los Angeles or San Francisco. These migrants often seek out suburban areas with good schools and safe streets. Such areas exist in the blue states, too, but they tend to be more expensive.
Immigration flows, long a source of demographic vitality for coastal metropolitan areas, have been shifting to the interior, as Brookings has noted. From 2010 to 2018, the foreign-born population of Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin, Columbus, Charlotte, Nashville, and Orlando increased by more than 20 percent, while San Francisco’s foreign-born population grew only 11 percent, and New York’s by 5 percent. Los Angeles suffered a loss of nearly 1 percent. The foreign-born are also headed in increasing numbers to unlikely locations such as North Dakota, which experienced foreign-born growth of 115 percent, and South Dakota (58 percent), while states such as Minnesota and Iowa had more than 25 percent growth.
Many urban politicians act as if talent will continue to cluster in elite places like San Francisco, New York, West Los Angeles, or Seattle, but companies seeking to recruit educated workers increasingly flock to places like Dallas–Fort Worth, Orlando, Nashville, and other affordable red-state metros. The movement of corporate offices has been particularly marked, with an estimated 1,800 firms leaving California for the Lone Star State in just one year. These companies are not just low-wage employers but high-paying firms like Toyota, Nissan, McKesson, Bechtel, Jacobs, Parsons, and Sanford Bernstein. Once a jobs magnet, California has emerged as the largest sender of jobs to Texas. Between 2000 and 2013, the Golden State was the source of more than 51,000 jobs, about one-fifth of all jobs moving to Texas. The most recent survey for Chief Executive Magazine ranks Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Indiana as more business-friendly, while blue bastions California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut stood at the bottom.
The impacts on higher-wage-sector growth are evident. In the category of business and professional employment , the largest source of high-wage jobs, the biggest gains over the decade were in Utah, the Carolinas, and Texas; only blue Oregon and purple Colorado were in the top 10, which also included some surprising Midwestern states such as Missouri, Michigan, and North Dakota. Last year, the red-blue gap strengthened further, with Utah and Idaho growing almost 50 percent faster than California, and almost five times as quickly as New York or New Jersey. Even the high-tech sector , long clustered in a handful of places , gradually is moving toward red America. Over the past decade, three prominent blue states—California, New York, and Washington—ranked in the top ten, with North Carolina, Utah, and South Dakota in the lead. Last year, however, New York dropped toward the middle, while Idaho, Utah, and Tennessee took the top spots.
The process of geographic change is more like a slow, steady drip than a torrent. Such long-term trends in employment and demographics will take years, even decades to overturn. New York, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have been building their intellectual capital for generations, and they likely will remain preeminent in certain core industries—tech and entertainment in California, finance and media in New York and Connecticut—for the foreseeable future.
But these shifts will have consequences. New York and California depend heavily on high-income earners to fund their massive budgets, with the very rich accounting for roughly half of all income-tax revenues. When these affluent individuals saw their state and local deductions drop in 2017, they were more tempted to decamp to low-tax states like Florida. But even before the change in federal tax policy on local deductions, a Bloomberg study found Florida and South Carolina reaping multi-billion dollar gains from migration, much of it from states like Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. Just in 2017 and 2018, Illinois lost over $12 billion in income due to out-migration. This year, perhaps not surprisingly, Governor Cuomo blamed New York’s fiscal challenges in part to the migration of wealthy people from the state.
California’s losses are less extreme, perhaps a testament to the power of the tech economy and the state’s beauty and mild climate. Yet rather than the rich arriving “ in droves ,” as the Los Angeles Times insists, more people making over $200,000 left than came, by a small margin, from 2014 to 2016, according to IRS data, even as the middle orders were leaving in large numbers. In California and other blue states, a legacy of high spending, a slowing economy, and burdensome taxes is taking its toll, particularly on the state and local budgets. Overall, despite its still-strong economy, California suffers from a significant pension burden; U.S. News places California 42nd in fiscal health among the states.
Then there are political consequences. Power has been shifting out of the Northeast for decades, and the area, which in 1950 had 115 members of the House, now has 78, down one-third. California , waxing for well over a century, is now growing below the national average, and is likely to lose a seat. Meantime, red states will probably gain seats. Texas is expected to pick up three seats; Florida two seats; and Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina one each.
Of course, changes in Washington could alter this trajectory. Widespread endorsement by Democratic candidates to ban fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania could drive these states into recession. In Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would vaporize, while nationwide, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs—far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession.
Policies that will raise energy prices and regulate manufacturing could harm states like Utah, Nevada, and Michigan, where industrial workforces have expanded during the past decade. By contrast, such policies will have little direct effect on states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, or California, where manufacturing employment has either declined or stagnated.
But if the current stalemate in Washington continues, we can expect the economic, demographic, and political shift from blue to red states to continue—and even accelerate. It can only be reversed, or slowed, when the political and business leadership in blue states finally recognize that their current policies are, economically and demographically, unsustainable.
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Many urban politicians act as if talent will continue to cluster in elite places like San Francisco, New York, West Los Angeles, or Seattle, but companies seeking to recruit educated workers increasingly flock to places like Dallas–Fort Worth, Orlando, Nashville, and other affordable red-state metros. The movement of corporate offices has been particularly marked, with an estimated 1,800 firms leaving California for the Lone Star State in just one year. These companies are not just low-wage employers but high-paying firms like Toyota, Nissan, McKesson, Bechtel, Jacobs, Parsons, and Sanford Bernstein. Once a jobs magnet, California has emerged as the largest sender of jobs to Texas. Between 2000 and 2013, the Golden State was the source of more than 51,000 jobs, about one-fifth of all jobs moving to Texas. The most recent survey for Chief Executive Magazineranks Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Indiana as more business-friendly, while blue bastions California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut stood at the bottom.
The impacts on higher-wage-sector growth are evident. In the category of business and professional employment , the largest source of high-wage jobs, the biggest gains over the decade were in Utah, the Carolinas, and Texas; only blue Oregon and purple Colorado were in the top 10, which also included some surprising Midwestern states such as Missouri, Michigan, and North Dakota. Last year, the red-blue gap strengthened further, with Utah and Idaho growing almost 50 percent faster than California, and almost five times as quickly as New York or New Jersey. Even the high-tech sector , long clustered in a handful of places , gradually is moving toward red America. Over the past decade, three prominent blue states—California, New York, and Washington—ranked in the top ten, with North Carolina, Utah, and South Dakota in the lead. Last year, however, New York dropped toward the middle, while Idaho, Utah, and Tennessee took the top spots.
The process of geographic change is more like a slow, steady drip than a torrent. Such long-term trends in employment and demographics will take years, even decades to overturn. New York, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts have been building their intellectual capital for generations, and they likely will remain preeminent in certain core industries—tech and entertainment in California, finance and media in New York and Connecticut—for the foreseeable future.
But these shifts will have consequences. New York and California depend heavily on high-income earners to fund their massive budgets, with the very rich accounting for roughly half of all income-tax revenues. When these affluent individuals saw their state and local deductions drop in 2017, they were more tempted to decamp to low-tax states like Florida. But even before the change in federal tax policy on local deductions, a Bloomberg study found Florida and South Carolina reaping multi-billion dollar gains from migration, much of it from states like Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. Just in 2017 and 2018, Illinois lost over $12 billion in income due to out-migration. This year, perhaps not surprisingly, Governor Cuomo blamed New York’s fiscal challenges in part to the migration of wealthy people from the state.
Democrat candidates and congress persons have made clear that if they regain political power across the board that they intend to send Heartland America states economies into a Great Depression via federal rules and regulations. They think all we deserve is hopelessness and a rekindling of the opioid epidemic.
Yep those meth labs in the heartland are cranking out product
More contempt for middle America from the bi coastal elites. The opioids issue is finally being grappled with and consumption is going down as hope and jobs go up and fentanyl from China is down and ms-13 is being cracked down on.
But those midwest meth labs are still cranking out product.
Link? Proof? Evidence? Or just more contempt for working and middle class people in fly over country?
Trump hasn't done squat about the opioid crisis. But his supporters are dumb enough to believe his lies that he has. Maybe they're all on meth; that would explain how they could worship a narcissistic man who hates our constitution and our country so much.
I suppose coronavirus has reduced the supply of fentanyl from China .... next thing you know, Trump will be taking credit for that.
More disdain for intelligence from ignorant idiots.
That's where most met labs are, and you don't live in fly over country, you are in Cali, far from fly over country.
Shh. Don't point that out, he likes to pretend he's a persecuted Heartland American rather than a left-coast, fact-adverse, hater.
So you think that from Pennsylvania to the mountain west and from Florida to Texas and all in between are ignorant idiots? And you wonder why we can’t stand bi coastal urban elites and we’re proud of electing Trump to revive our economy.
The part of Californication I live in is mostly rural well north of the Bay Area counties and Sacramento and yes we consider ourselves to be flyover country as we have far more in common including strongly pro Trump with them than with the coastal parts of this cursed state
No, just a few very specific people who love to double down every time they say something ignorant. I can't stand willful ignorance or liars.
I live in West Virginia, for fuck's sake.
Sorry, you don't get to redefine terms every time you get triggered. You're not in flyover country. And if your state is so cursed, why don't you move? What kind of idiot would stay in a state he hates so much?
We are trying to secede from it and create the state of Jefferson. That’s how we are trying to leave. Many of us already left, enough to take away a Congressional district from here and give it to a red state so that’s good
Never. Gonna. Happen.
Why don't you try something sane, like moving?
People who move somewhere they hate and then try to change it are generally not rational. Why didn't you stay in flyover country if you love it and hate CA so much?
You are not living in a flyover state
Keep trying, someday you'll never get there. It won't happen
I’ve lived in Redding, Ca since August 1960 except for my college years in Lincoln, Ne. I was born in Nashville, Tn in May 1960. Both Lincoln and Nashville are very nice places. Redding and far north rural Jefferson are my home and I’m not leaving.
The left isn't ignorant
right
West Virginia was a reliably blue state for the longest time until the 2000 campaign. Even then it took another dozen years or more for the GOP to win down ballot from President.
No I live in a flyover section of the so called state I live in.
Yes. It. Will.
You live on the west coast, not the heartland.
Ya, liberals did a good job with Cali.
Lol.....I have 3 relatives and a long time friend who live in Cali....they are all doing fine.
Funny how people think Cali is the boogeyman of states.
I'll bet, all isolated from the filth and street people.
We don’t think it is that. We know that it is exactly that.
Actually Eureka on the coast is about a 150 mile drive for us.
If it's so bad then why not move out? I know, I know, you're waiting for the mythical jefferson...keep waiting.
What does that have to do with this idiotic article? Are you going to deny that WV is a rural state - flyover country? We are further from the coast than you are.
That’s just it. Here in this area it’s not that bad. Most of our elected representatives from local, school boards to city councils to county boards of supervisors to mayors to state assembly, state senate, US house, are conservative and Republican. Up here, our living and housing costs are lower as are our local taxes. We have an Enterprise/Opportunity zone as well. We are far enough from coastal cities and Sacramento that we for the most part live as we desire, keeping state government as small a part of our lives as we can get away with. We also have a friendly President to help protect us from the rest of you.
You still live in California, you are still on the west coast.
For now until we secede from you. In the meantime we keep our southern and Midwest culture and avoid the coastal cities like the plague that they and their inhabitants are. Our climate is very different from a coastal climate. You may claim us but we don’t do likewise. We view the coastal urban areas a foreign hostile occupation force.
Keep dreaming, California will never secede. You still live in California and on the west coast
Just like I live in WNY 6 hours or more from NYC but I still live in NY and on the east coast
Lol, you need reading glasses or time for a new prescription
Have a good night too.
No one is asking California to secede except a few Trump hating progressives
But these shifts will have consequences. New York and California depend heavily on high-income earners to fund their massive budgets, with the very rich accounting for roughly half of all income-tax revenues. When these affluent individuals saw their state and local deductions drop in 2017, they were more tempted to decamp to low-tax states like Florida. But even before the change in federal tax policy on local deductions, a Bloomberg study found Florida and South Carolina reaping multi-billion dollar gains from migration, much of it from states like Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. Just in 2017 and 2018, Illinois lost over $12 billion in income due to out-migration. This year, perhaps not surprisingly, Governor Cuomo blamed New York’s fiscal challenges in part to the migration of wealthy people from the state.
California’s losses are less extreme, perhaps a testament to the power of the tech economy and the state’s beauty and mild climate. Yet rather than the rich arriving “ in droves ,” as the Los Angeles Times insists, more people making over $200,000 left than came, by a small margin, from 2014 to 2016, according to IRS data, even as the middle orders were leaving in large numbers. In California and other blue states, a legacy of high spending, a slowing economy, and burdensome taxes is taking its toll, particularly on the state and local budgets. Overall, despite its still-strong economy, California suffers from a significant pension burden; U.S. Newsplaces California 42nd in fiscal health among the states.
Then there are political consequences. Power has been shifting out of the Northeast for decades, and the area, which in 1950 had 115 members of the House, now has 78, down one-third. California , waxing for well over a century, is now growing below the national average, and is likely to lose a seat. Meantime, red states will probably gain seats. Texas is expected to pick up three seats; Florida two seats; and Arizona, Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina one each.
The beauty is that the Heartland is reviving and that people are leaving high tax blue states for lower tax red ones.
That is a problem in some places. A lot of us conservatives who leave fit in well where we move to. It’s the others who move usually to follow a major job relocation like a plant or hq moving out of state who take their crappy ideology with them.
I’m waiting until retirement to decide whether to stay here or move to a low tax red state. Jefferson would mean I could have the low tax red state without moving
Except Jefferson is just a delusion that nobody in their right mind thinks will ever happen.
I was born in a Nashville suburb and I loved the city when I went back as an adult. I liked Chattanooga and the state between those cities. I’d probably go somewhere near Reno even though Las Vegas is ruining the state. No income tax and still close to relatives in Placer and Shasta counties.
If DC and or Puerto Rico ever really seriously seek statehood then red areas of blue states including Jefferson would seek to be part of the senate balancing trade off.