Two weeks from today, I’m scheduled to fly to the Northeast. A few days at the family apple orchard in Connecticut, then the nephew’s graduation in New Jersey, then what promises to be a very enjoyable roadtrip return to New Mexico, where I live. (For the next few years, anyway — seriously looking at a relocation to Arizona, Utah, or Nevada.)
It’ll be the first time I’ve been back to the Northeast in over four years. And frankly, I haven’t missed the place. High taxes, ridiculous cost of living, Nanny Statism run amok. And terrible, terrible weather. I left for good reasons.
The Acela Corridor once dominated American life. But the country’s future is now driven by people and industries and trends found far from Brookline, New Haven, Manhattan, Bryn Mawr, and Chevy Chase. I explored the Northeast’s self-inflicted wounds in a column published a dozen years ago. Nothing’s changed. If anything, the decline intensified, once lockdown lunacy struck. Keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.
Enjoy!
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The U.S. Census Bureau continues to release crunched numbers from its 2010 enumeration of Americans. And while big-spending, tax-hiking, land-use-micromanaging, lifestyle-policing activists and pols ignore the figures, they confirm that the Northeast shows no sign of halting its slow-but-steady suicide.
Whether it’s population growth, job creation, domestic migration, or age, the Northeast — the six states of New England, plus New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — has been headed in undesirable directions for decades. The census proves that the region has not made public-policy course corrections.
Not a single Northeastern state picked up a seat in the House of Representatives, while New York lost two and Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania each surrendered one. Nationally, all states gained population — the reapportionment shift was due to explosive expansion in the South and West. But no state in the Northeast came close to the U.S. rate of 9.7 percent. The average for the region was a measly 3.5 percent. In some areas, loss, not weak growth, is the problem. Two Pennsylvania counties, Cambria and Allegheny, relinquished residents between 2000 and 2010. The same was true for New York’s Erie County and New Jersey’s Essex County.
And the future? Federal demographers predict that the Northeast’s share of the country’s citizenry will drop from 18.1 percent today to 15.9 percent in 2030.
Low birth rates aren’t solely to blame for the trend. Earlier this year, United Van Lines released its annual study of where Americans are moving. New Jersey “claimed the top spot on the high-outbound traffic list.” In six of the Northeast’s nine states, a majority of United Van Lines customers moved out.
This winter’s brutal snowfall surely encouraged many Boomers to skedaddle, but Generations X and Y appear more eager to flee their home states. A 2007 analysis by the Carsey Institute found that between 1990 and 2004, of New England’s 67 counties, “every one except for tiny Nantucket … experienced some decline in the young adult cohort.” The 2010 census documented the nation’s median age — half are older, half are younger — to be 37.2. Maine, at 42.7, took the graybeard award, and the other eight members of the Northeast cohort had higher median ages than the country.
Why do young folks head for other states? Runaway government that drives up the cost of nearly everything — housing, taxes, transportation, energy, investment, entertainment — hamstrings economic opportunity in the Northeast. In May, Forbes computed its annual “Best Cities for Jobs” list, which examined “employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported from November 1999 to January 2011.” Nearly 400 urbanized areas were scrutinized. Only three of the best 50 cities on the magazine’s list are in the Northeast: Lebanon, Pennsylvania; Ithaca, New York; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Not surprisingly, five of the 10 best performers are located in right-to-work, no-income-tax Texas.
Yet before the arrival of the Great Recession, the Northeast was a job-creation laggard. Click around on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and you’ll discover that between 1982 and 2007, a quarter-century of nearly uninterrupted economic progress, the U.S. grew employment by 53.4 percent. In the Northeast, the figure was far less impressive — just 25.8 percent, with Connecticut (18.8 percent) and New York (20.4 percent) landing at the bottom.
Quick, name a powerful fedpol from the Northeast. John Kerry? He couldn’t beat George W. Bush. Excepting Chuck Schumer, most Democrats prominent on the national stage aren’t from the region — e.g., Harry Reid (Nevada), Nancy Pelosi (California), and Debbie Wasserman Shultz (Florida). As for the GOP, let’s not waste our time.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is dead. So is Ted Kennedy. Arlen Specter has retired, as have Chris Shays and Chris Dodd. Joe Lieberman is on his way out. “Representing” fewer citizens and dwindling economic might, the men and women Northeast voters now send to D.C. are less able to secure transportation pork and unneeded (if job-rich) plane, missile, and submarine systems for the military-industrial complex.
Meanwhile, the Northeast’s governors and legislators still think unaffordable “investments” in preschool-to-Ph.D. government schools offer a promising path of escape. Corporatism’s popular, too. Massachusetts is pinning its hopes on videogame developers, while a Connecticut state senator, parroting establishment groupthink, avers that a $864 million expansion of a white-elephant, government-run health center is “the best single economic development initiative that I’ve seen.”
The Lone Star State captured four congressional seats this census. In 2020, after another decade of blundering by the Northeast, perhaps Texas will seize five.
First off, Utah's too Cold and Arizona is too hot! That leaves Nevada, which will probably get old REALLY FAST!! Although, NM is no Paris, France, or even close, we have some of the best weather in the Country. Utah definitely has the best Politics, but you better not advertise your anti-religious mantra. Mitt Romney is annoying as Hell and Utah is the home of the LDS (I personally have friends that belong to that Church and I'm fine with it). Arizona is the soulless home of transplants where nothing built will ever remain for very long before it is replaced, and there are NO Mom & Pops that remain in Phoenix. You'll never make any real friends. Everybody there is only out for themselves, kinda like a hot climate version NYC! Scottsdale is frequently referred to as "SnotsVille". You'll know what it means if you ever move there. The Phoenix News is 5 mins of news (maybe) and 25 minutes of Sports!
Americans are moving from the NE, because living in a Marxist Socialist Communist State is not worth it!! It didn't used to be that way in the NE. Yeah, everyone was a Democrat, but they didn't act like WOKE ASS HATS!! If that attitude ever changes, then maybe the NE part of these United States will be a wonderful place again! But I'm not holding my breath!
I left upstate NY over 40 years ago. I could see the handwriting on the wall: high taxes, bad job market and miserable weather. I figured I could do as poorly economically in NM as in NY but would be able to golf 10 months a year in NM (and I did). Don't expect any radical change in the Northeast in the near future. As many others have pointed out, the people who would normally oppose woke Dem policies in those states have moved to FL, leaving behind dire hard Dems (as is also the case in NM).