Posted on 11/23/2012 6:28:55 AM PST by VitacoreVision
The U-Haul Index, popularized by economist Mark Perry, shows how much extra people in California are willing to pay to get out of town and head for Texas.
Latest U-Haul Index Shows Californians Leaving for Texas
The New American
23 November 2012
One of the best indicators of a state’s economic health, according to John Merline, writing in Investor’s Business Daily, is the “U-Haul Index” (first publicized by economist Mark Perry) to see what people are paying to move into, or out of, the state. Renting a 20-foot truck one way from San Francisco to San Antonio, Texas, for example, costs $1,693. Going in the other direction, however, costs only $983 for the same truck.
As Perry explains:
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The American people and businesses are voting with their feet and their one-way truck rentals to escape California and its forced unionism, high taxes, and high unemployment rate for a better life in low-tax, business-friendly, right-to-work states like Texas.
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They have lots of reasons to leave. According to the Tax Foundation, “Tax Freedom Day” arrives earlier in Texas than it does in California, due to its zero individual and corporate income tax and a lower sales tax. Put together, Texas’ state and local tax burden is less than eight percent of income, well below the national average of nearly 10 percent, while California’s is almost 12 percent.
This enormous disparity puts California the 48th out of the 50 states in the foundation’s overall business tax climate index, while Texas ranks ninth.
It isn't all about taxes, however. Its regulatory environment and yawning fiscal deficits are chasing companies away to more favorable locales. Part is the state’s determined efforts to increase still further its tax burden on high income earners — now an astounding 13 percent — along with its implementation of policies favored by the Obama administration in Washington. As Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com put it,
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California will serve as the prime testing ground for President Obama’s form of post-economic liberalism. Every dream program that the Administration embraces — cap and trade, massive taxes on the rich, high-speed rail — is either in place or on the drawing boards.
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Despite the state’s efforts to redistribute the wealth from those who earned it to those who didn't, “the ranks of the poor have swollen to the point that the state, with 12% of the nation’s population, accounts for one-third of its welfare cases,” notes Kotkin.
In their study “The Great California Exodus,” Manhattan Institute’s authors Tom Gray and Robert Scardamalia looked not only at how many are leaving, but where they’re going and why. Since 1990 California has lost nearly 3½ million residents, most of them moving to southwestern states such as Texas, Nevada, and Arizona.
They blame this out-migration on California’s “chronic economic adversity” as well as its population density: Los Angeles and Orange County have nearly 7,000 people per square mile, more than either New York City or Chicago. A third factor is what they call the state’s “constant fiscal instability” and the likelihood that its continued spending beyond its means will result in even higher taxes in the future.
Put altogether, then, the authors conclude
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that many cost drivers — taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs — are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus.
The U-Haul Index has been confirmed in each of the last eight years by Chief Executive magazine in its annual survey of CEOs: "Texas easily clinched the No. 1 rank, the eighth successive time it has done so. California earns the dubious honor of being ranked dead last for the eighth consecutive year."
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The magazine notes the obvious:
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California’s enduring place of perpetual decline continues in this year’s ranking. Once the most attractive business environment, the Golden State appears to slip deeper into the ninth circle of business hell. The economy, which used to outperform the rest of the country, now substantially under performs.
And its status as the most ruinously contentious place to operate remains undisturbed in eight years. Its unemployment rate, at 10.9 percent, is higher than every other state except Nevada and Rhode Island. With 12 percent of America’s population, California has one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients.
Each year, the evidence that businesses are leaving California or avoid locating there because of the high cost of doing business due to excessive state taxes and stringent regulations, grows.
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The U-Haul index is right: More and more people think it’s worth it to pay extra to get out of California.
The problem is these idiots bring their liberal politics with them and mess up the red states.
Butt will these Californians be “Bringing(Inflicting)” thier SWIVED(look it up)-UP California “Ideas” that have SCREWED UP that state with them?
Watch out, Texas. Same thing happened to Oregon 30 years ago and they haven’t been right since.
locust
There goes Texas. Between the Californicators and the illegals, that state is lost.
Great! Liberals flooding the country, spreading like a virus to poison whatever area they land in at large enough numbers.
Put up fake road signs.
California is a liberal’s paradise, it’s the product of their mindset. Hopefully it’s the small government-type people getting out of the California hellhole.
Direct them to Austin. Keep ‘em all in one place.
These POS had better not be libtards... You’ve already infested and eff’d up one state, don’t come here thinking you’ll do the same. Ignorant morons...
Someone warn please these people. We have huge giant lizards that will eat your children, the women have green skin and horns, giant monsters roam the streets and carry people away, there are no jobs, land is a million dollars a square foot, it rains crickets every spring, we have no electric power, we have no sanitation, etc, etc, etc.
(Please, no more immigrants from outside the state unless they are rock solid conservatives. We just elected a dam good Senator, and we really don't need ANY transplanted liberal crap.)
I doubt the liberals are the ones leaving.
Dumbasses going to Texas to pollute it with their shi&&y voting habits.
Forget protecting the border with Mexico we need to protect, it’s the New Mexico one we need to patrol.
Texas is a Miserable place its Hot, the people are rude, its all desert with big spiders and snakes. The Mesquitos are HUGE and will suck all the blood out of a small child.
All the roads are dirt and the food is the worst you could ever eat... there are no fast food restaraunts and no modern Conveniences such as internet or mobile phone.
STAY AWAY Californians this place ins’t for you.
A lot of those leaving are those who have worked for the public sector all their lives, and are now collecting their CalPERS retirement checks, and will now disavow Kalifornia's fiscal mess as even though they had a hand in it and still benefit from it.
In a decade, they will make Texas into Cali2.
Then, they will be looking for some other state to invade and ruin.
Don’t let them Californicate Texas!
Perhaps we need to welcome them as the welcomed people from north Texas fleeing the dust bowl in the 1930s.
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