Posted on 09/30/2012 6:51:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After World War II, California was where Americans went in search of a better life—the state with more jobs, more space, more sunlight, and more opportunity. But since 1990, Californians have gone elsewhere for opportunity, with the state losing a net of more than 3.7 million people to other states.
n the national recovery or slow slog since the economy bottomed out roughly three years ago, even California has regained some ground. As of this August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it has added more than a half million jobs since its payroll totals hit bottom around the end of 2009.
It seems natural these days to assume that the Golden State is the sick man of the U.S.—so if even California is coming back, however weakly, perhaps the recovery is real.
As recently as the 1980s, California still had the aura of an unstoppable growth machine, and such a view would have been unthinkable. Now, Texas is the object of economic envy and California is the object lesson, the toxic state.
It's a partisan narrative to be sure, with Republican-run Texas as a low-tax, right-to-work mecca for business. But propaganda aside, though, there is statistical reality to the idea that Texas is rising and California is falling back. In 2000, California’s jobless rate was 4.9%, while the Texas rate was 4.4%. Ten years later, that half-percentage-point gap had widened to more than four points: 12.4% to 8.2%. Texas is also adding more jobs than California, which has 50% more people.
These figures help explain the findings of a new study I conducted along with demographer Robert Scardamalia for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership, The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look. During the first decade of the 2000s, according to IRS data on the movement of income-tax filers, California saw a net loss of 635,000 people and aggregate income of $14.7 billion to just three states—Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Texas was the leading destination, with about 225,000 Californians relocating there.
At the beginning of the decade, when California and Texas were fairly close in job production, movement between the states was close to even. About 35,000 Texans moved to California between the 2000 and 2001 tax years, and slightly fewer than 42,000 Californians moved to Texas. Five years later, Texas had gained a lopsided advantage, gaining about 72,400 Californians while losing about 31,200 Texans to the Golden State. At the decade’s end, the recession had dampened migration in all directions—people are less prone to move when fewer jobs are available to attract them. But Texas remained the far more popular draw, attracting 48,900 Californians while losing just 33,900.
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And their earthquakes. Texas just had two!
Texas and California have always been different and Texas has something that California never had, right wing Evangelicals.
Texas and California already have the same EXACT percentage of Hispanics today, and look at the difference.
Texans will fight to preserve Texas as a conservative, Christian state, Californians never much cared about such things, and were easy to push aside.
There are exceptions.....
I’m a Goldwater Republican, moved from California to Texas two years ago to keep my job.
Never going back, no matter how good the weather.
That’s all Cali has going for it now.... the rest of it stinks.... no work... no sense....no responsibility.
See post #9, more went to Florida....
“I hope your wrong, because there is no route to a Republican presidential victory that doesn’t go through Texas.
If Texas falls to the Democrats... it’s over.”
I’ve posted about this before, but it’s inevitable. Not something “that’s there right now”, of course not. But take a long look down the road, and....
It was several months ago an article was posted here on FR, containing the demographics of who IS BEING BORN in Texas hospitals.
Something like 70+% of the babies born are to non-white mothers, mostly Hispanic, many of them (if not most?) illegals. The white population of Texas isn’t having many babies, but the Hispanics are flooding the place with muchachos and muchachas.
Even if the parents are illegal, and can’t vote, EVERY one of the births in Texas to an illegal Hispanic mother produces AN AMERICAN CITIZEN (shouting intentional). No, they can’t vote today — but wait 20 years, and everything changes.
Demographically, in twenty years Hispanics are going to represent a much larger portion of Texas’ population than it does now — if not a majority, close to it. And we know how they’re going to vote.
Unless all these Hispanic kids move OUT of Texas, the mathematics of this is a certainty.
Look at New Mexico next door. It has now become the second state (California was first) in which Euros are now a minority. How have NM’s politics changed in the last decade? It may have once been more conservative, but now it’s a “leans blue” state, getting bluer....
I’m no happier about the reality of what’s happening than you are — it’s happened right here in the Connecticut city in which I live. Twenty years ago, this was a quiet, in-town neighborhood. It’s now been taken over by illegals, and it won’t be changing back. The house next to me was once just like mine, but has been converted into an “illegal hotel” and has 8 cars parked there.
Texas is the last “big state” that (for now) is reliably Republican, but what happens when those 55 electoral votes “go blue”? How will the Republicans win again?
That day is coming...
everything you said is completely true.
I have lived here my whole life and I barely recognize the place from what it was in my youth.
all the schools in my area are already nearly 70% hispanics. We’ve already lost.
This isn’t a winner for TX. Consider the people who left California out of disgust; they went to coastal Oregon and turned it into another Commie hellhole, then they went to coastal Washington State and turned IT into another Commie hellhole, Colorado is changing, others are changing.
I hope and pray that Texans successfully resist the Commufornians who move to the Lone Star state.
God Bless Texas...
Please, no more Liberal Californians, Illinoisans, New Yorkers, or Yankees of any kind to TEXAS... They get here because they love what Freedom has to offer, then try to change Us to be more like where they had to leave..
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, stay where you are and change your own home to be more like US..
Don't forget that lots of conservatives are moving from California to Texas. I'm one of that number, as are a host of other Freepers. We're just the tip of the iceberg.
you’re lucky that they are only 70% ....give it 4 years and you’ll be at 90%.....
West Texas is gone ....it’s like a third world country in many of the small towns ....it’s as you say unrecognizable ....there are no words to express it to people haven’t lived through the transformation we are going through
I've lived here only 25 years and can see an enormous difference. The only thing keeping me here now are my grandkids. And I told my daughter and son-in-law they they need to move to Montana.
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