Data show people are fleeing to Florida and Texas
Jack Elbaum
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If one only listened to the corporate press, it would be natural to believe people are fleeing the right-wing dystopias of Florida and Texas in record numbers to the liberal hubs of California and New York. But, in the real world, the story is much different.
CNBC analyzed data from an online rental brokerage firm and reported on Sunday, “1 in 4 U.S. homebuyers want to move to a different city” right now. Where are they going? Well, the data show that nine of the 10 top cities people want to move to are in either Florida, Texas, Arizona, or Nevada. In fact, seven of 10 are in either Florida or Texas.
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Meanwhile, the cities people most want to leave, according to these data, are some of the most liberal in the country: San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Hartford, Denver, and Detroit.
This is consistent with other data on domestic net migration that found Florida, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia made up the top six most desirable states for those moving in 2022.
So much for the narrative that these places everyone wants to move to right now are actually the worst in the country — a narrative, I may add, that is not merely inferred based on the bad press these states regularly receive. Rather, a few weeks ago, CNBC even made it explicit when it published a ranking of “America’s 10 worst states to live and work in for 2023” that was filled with red states that are actually increasingly popular. I noted at the time how ironic this was, considering “six of the top 12 states in terms of net domestic migration were listed in the top 10 worst states” in the piece.
People vote with their feet.
It is sometimes asked how anybody could be a conservative when progressives are for, well, progress. They favor government guarantees for jobs, housing, food, healthcare, and myriad other things. How could that possibly be a bad thing? As economist Thomas Sowell points out, “However attractive the social justice vision, the crucial question is whether the social justice agenda will get us to the fulfillment of that vision.” The fact such an agenda, enacted essentially in full in cities such as San Francisco, has led to a mass exodus rather than the realization of utopia suggests something important: namely, that we cannot assess policy primarily on the basis of intentions but rather on consequences.
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Another takeaway from this new data is that “the search patterns suggest homebuyers are looking to leave large coastal hubs for cities in low-tax states that have considerably cheaper home prices.” In other words, economic concerns.
Of course, that is no surprise, either. As the saying goes: It’s the economy, stupid!
Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.