Posted on 05/17/2011 6:33:31 AM PDT by Walter Scott Hudson
Young workers, the lifeblood of any economy, are set to flee New York in droves.
A new Marist College poll shows that 36% of New Yorkers under the age of 30 are planning to leave New York within the next five years - and more than a quarter of all adults are planning to bolt the Empire State.This should surprise no one. People work to provide for themselves and otherwise pursue happiness. When fiscal policies and regulation create an environment hostile to that objective, people are going to leave. That is, if they are allowed.The New York City suburbs, with their high property values and taxes, are leading the exodus, the poll found.
Of those preparing to leave, 62% cite economic reasons like cost of living, taxes - and a lack of jobs.
The ability to vote with your feet is an essential check on state and local government. But it requires maintaining a clearly defined federalism, with strict division of powers between each level of government. New Yorkers have somewhere to flee to, because the jurisdictions of state and local government are inherently limited. It should be obvious, but the point is often lost in our national policy debates.
Before Obamacare, Massachusetts had Romneycare. Minnesota has a number of state-run healthcare programs. Several states in the union have dabbled in various socialist ventures. Yet the national outcry against such policies, seen most prominently in the Tea Party, is a relatively recent development. Why? Because nationalizing such policies removes exodus as a viable protest of last resort, raising the stakes of debate and backing dissenters into a corner. You can move from Minnesota to Texas with relative ease. Relocating to another country is much more difficult.
That's a large part of the reason our political discourse is so polarized, because we've adopted a one-size-fits-all approach to public policy whereby minorities are railroaded by the national majority. Instead, we ought to return to the libertarian live-and-let-live approach which the Founders enabled through clearly divided power. Doing so will require bold statesmen in state and local government, willing to reject funds from on high when strings are attached.
There is no better guarantor of liberty than divided power. A national government which dictates the policies of each state cannot be held in check. States free to compete for the best and brightest, even if run by dyed-in-the-wool leftists, will eventually be forced to reverse course by the inevitable consequences of their horrible policies. To get business and young workers back, they will have to lower taxes, reduce regulation, and compete to become the freest and thus most attractive state in the union.
Where else is there to go other than America?
Tell them Oklahoma is closed. We’ve already got more deadbeats, socialists, liberals and crimigrants than we can handle.
Well, Canada is more conservative than America now.
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.
(The smart left a long time ago.)”
What about Conservatives?
Canada has 100 percent socialized medicine coast to coast.
Whoever told you that is lying.
There is no other place to go. It’s America alone.
Of course conservatives from New York are welcome. Both of them.
Like spores from a nasty weed, the offspring of liberals scatter into other states and ruin them with their social demands to be more like what the liberals ran away from
D’oh
happened to New Hampshire, Colorado
Florida, North Carolina, Arizona are on the way...maybe Texas too unless they build a moat around Austin
Looks like those “liberals” in NY donate way more to Free Republic than you guys down in OK. What’s up with that?
New York #9
Oklahomo #39
https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/scoreboard
Liberal idiot migration is killing us. They have flooded to NC over the past decade and damned if they haven’t brought their destructive voting habits with them. NC went blue in 2008, mostly because of yankee carpetbaggers.
could be because there are about 6 times as many people in NY as Oklahoma? Just a guess.
re: willing to reject funds from on high when strings are attached
And thereby hangs the tale on which so much our national crisis is based! The feds are no better than drug dealers. They provide the product virtually free, get you you hooked and they have you by the soft parts.
There’s no better example than the school lunch program. Sixty years ago it was milk being provided free, or at very low cost. Milk, and butter. And then bit by bit the scope of the program, and the strings attached, was expanded. Now at least a dozen federal programs are tied to the lunch programs and the feds control a great deal of the local school system’s policies and programs. Fail to abide by the reams of rules and regs proscribed the feds and the system loses federal funds in all sorts of programs unrelated to feeding the kids.
And of course as the local money used for feeding the kids, or buying books, or whatever are freed up by federal programs they are diverted to other uses, until the local authorities have no choice but to go along.
In all likelihood we are beyond the point of no return.
Well, if they’re renting U-Haul, we won’t have to worry. They’ll never make it past Ohio.
My sister, who has been asking for like forever when I will be moving back to NY, finally came to visit.
Afer enjoying the weather and scenery she was stunned to find out that the taxes on my property were about 1/4 of what she pays in NY. And that is with six times the land and four times the living space she has. Not to mention state taxes.
Now all she has to do is convince her husband.
It doesn’t matter the population. NY’ers are helping to keep FR alive more than OK. Facts, man, facts.
Maybe NY Conservatives are just smarter and therefore make more money?
Soon the only ones left will be on Welfare or in the Government or MSM.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.