First U-Haul, Now the IRS

A few years back, I noted that a major do-it-yourself moving company was having to pay employees to drive trucks back to California due to net out-migration. Now, the Washington Post reports on a more comprehensive picture, obtained from IRS data, of migration from high-tax, high-regulation "blue" states to comparatively free "red" states. Stephen Moore concludes:

The latest Census and IRS data merely confirm what Americans can see every day with their own two eyes. Red states are a magnet. There's a downside to this for sure. Conservatives have a legitimate gripe that as blue staters come into their prosperous red states, they try to turn them blue. That's happened in New Hampshire where Massachusetts transplants vote for the left-wing policies they just fled.

But the underlying trend is unmistakable: Liberal blue states are economic dinosaurs.

Will they change their ways before they go the way of Detroit and become extinct?

The antecedent in Moore's last sentence is wrong: It should be "Americans," as, for example, the pro-union bumper stickers I keep seeing as I drive through moribund St. Louis every day attest. Too many Americans think they can have both the fruits of freedom and loot -- be it in the form of hand-outs or favors obtained through government force. If they keep choosing the latter, they will ultimately kill the golden goose of the former.

-- CAV