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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Americans Are Migrating To More Free Republican States
By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Americans are migrating from less-free liberal states to more-free
conservative states, where they are doing better economically, according to
a new study published Thursday by George Mason University's Mercatus Center.
The "Freedom in the 50 States" study measured economic and personal freedom
using a wide range of criteria, including tax rates, government spending and
debt, regulatory burdens, and state laws covering land use, union
organizing, gun control, education choice and more.
It found that the freest states tended to be conservative "red" states,
while the least free were liberal "blue" states.
The freest state overall, the researchers concluded, was North Dakota,
followed by South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. The least
free state by far was New York, followed by California, New Jersey, Hawaii
and Rhode Island.
The study also compared its measures of economic and personal freedom to
population shifts and income growth, and found that freer states tend to do
better on both scores than those less free.
For example, it found a strong correlation between a state's freedom ranking
and migration, which means that Americans are gravitating toward states
that have less-intrusive governments.
Escape From New York, L.A.
New York, for example, saw a net migration of -9.2% between 2000 and 2011,
and California's was -4.2%. In contrast, Tennessee gained 4.4%, and Oklahoma
gained 1.3%.
An IBD analysis of the data found that "red" states — those voting for
Republican presidential candidates in the past two elections — saw an
overall net migration of 2.2%, while "blue" states saw an overall average
net migration of -0.3%.
"People are voting for places with greater freedom," said William Ruger, a
political scientist at Texas State University and one of the co-authors of
the study. That was true, he said, even after controlling for things like
weather and amenities that might attract people to states independent of
these freedom measures.
The study also found that states with more freedom tended to see stronger
income growth. This was particularly true in states with more regulatory
freedom.
"Adam Smith was right," Ruger said. "If you have economic freedom, you will
have economic growth."
IBD has previously reported that red states saw stronger job growth, lower
unemployment and bigger gains in per capita income than blue states during
the economic recovery. For example, IBD found that in the first three years
of the recovery, red states saw 1.9% job growth compared with 1.2% for blue
states.
The Mercatus study also found that blue states have generally become less
free over the past decade, while red states have tended to gain additional
levels of freedom. The states with the biggest declines in freedom were
Wyoming, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Kansas. Those with the biggest
gains were Oklahoma, North Dakota, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico.
And contrary to conventional wisdom, the researchers found that conservative
states are just as likely as liberal ones to score well on measures of
personal freedom, which looked at laws covering marijuana use, gambling,
marriage rights, alcohol and tobacco use, gun control, victimless crimes and
the like.
"Personal freedom does not relate straightforwardly to the left-right
spectrum at all," the study noted.
The study's findings also call into question claims made repeatedly by
President Obama during last year's campaign that tax cuts and deregulation
won't produce growth and prosperity.
"They tell us," he said in one speech, that "if we just cut more regulations
and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow
stronger."
"Here's the problem," he said. "It doesn't work. It has never worked."
But if anything, the data show precisely the opposite. |
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