2020 U.S. Migration Map
northamerican.com
northamerican.com
Of course like many states my experience is heavily biased by my location within the state (Research Triangle Park, Raleigh/Durham area). The only major downside so far has been that most of the tech jobs are concentrated in med-tech, advertising, or sales, however with Google/Apple coming to town hopefully that'll change.
Mid-career executive accepts job offer in the US in Charlotte, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, or Tampa. Is excited about the opportunity and the raise in salary, and curious about living in a different country, but a little nervous about moving to a "right wing Republican" state "without healthcare".
A few months in, the reports back to friends and family change. More and more mention of the "amazing" house they found in the suburbs with an outdoor pool (!) that is so much less expensive than in Toronto or Vancouver, the "fantastic" school the kids attend with sports teams and cheerleading and other afterschool activities, and—especially—how unbelievably cheap everything is at the supermarket, mall, and gas station.
That family is never moving back to Canada. This happens over and over again.
From my experience, it's not uncommon to file for both the US and Canada as a backup.
What's the strategy for matching the top performers that are leaving?
You've hit on the problem with the Canadian governmental strategy that izend mentioned; those who leave aren't being replaced on a 1:1 basis in terms of quality.
In a survey of scientists from 16 countries (<http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...>), the US is the top destination from 13 of the 15 others and the #2 choice from the other two. If you are a Canadian scientist, there is a 16% chance (<https://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/37lgxg/the_...>) that you will move to the US. That's not "16% of all Canadian scientists that move out of the country move to the US". Let me repeat: *16% of all Canadian scientists move to the US.* More to the point, they're also likely to be among the top Canadian scientists, too.
By comparison, 5% of all American scientists move to another country, of which 32% go to Canada, so about 1.6-1.7% total. Since the US has nine times more people, that means that in absolute numbers the 1.7% of American scientists is about equal to the 16% of Canadian scientists, but there is no reason to think that the 1.7% makes up the top tier of American scientists; why would the best move north of the border? In other words, the US is receiving the best of Canadian scientists in exchange for an equal number of its non-best.
I wonder, why doesn't Canada simply... compete?
It's not that simple. The cities I mentioned are all in the US sunbelt, and Canada (and the northeast and northern midwest US) can't compete with the southern and western US's. The sunbelt has cheaper land, as well; Vancouver (the only part of Canada with competitive weather to the US sunbelt) is jammed into the Fraser Valley between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains. The prairie provinces have plenty of land (which is partly why Edmonton and Calgary are growing so quickly), but have terrible winters.
On the other hand, the weather and cheaper land don't wholly explain the competitive differential, either. It's not unusual for an American to move from New York or Boston to San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, or Miami, or a Canadian to move from Toronto or Montreal to any of those cities. It's also not unusual for someone to move from San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, or Miami to New York or Boston, despite the latter cities' colder winters. It is unusual for someone to move from NY, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, etc. to move to Toronto or Montreal; I've calculated elsewhere (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25367731>) that an average Canadian is 27 times more likely to move to the US than an average American is to move to Canada.
Another differential is cost of living. Why Canadians pay much more and have access to less despite living in a country that is 95% culturally, economically, and politically identical to the US, I do not know. I didn't fully understand the disparity until I read the amazing stories in a Reddit discussion. victorn72's account (<http://np.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1ueai3/why_are_our_pr...>) caused my jaw to drop open. This is why every large US border town along the Canadian border has malls where, every day (in normal circumstances with the border fully open) you see hordes of Canadian shoppers in parking lots frantically opening sealed electronics and clothing to try to bypass import duties when returning home.
Not sure about that. The local mechanism to prevent housing expansion is kind of counter-productive, but there may be a rational for that. No matter you agree with it or not, suburban residents seem to enjoy their way of life and don’t want to have massive crowds move into their towns.
It presents a hope, at least, that suburbanites could be won over with qualitatively better implementations of density, relative to the same development pattern but bigger and more intense.
Unless you're proposing a China-style system of internal passport controls, there's no way to prevent this. NIMBYs are fighting the tides on this. People move where there are jobs and nice weather. In trying to hold back the ocean, NIMBYs create even more problems.
What do you think will happen to the assessed value of the existing owners’ property after all the rich transplants buy up the neighborhood? What do you think that will do to their property tax? What do you think that will do to their ability to remain homeowners?
And what about their children? They’ll be directly priced out.
IIRC, Jack London wrote about it. But I'm looking it up and it seems like maybe Jack London traveled the whole country as a hobo... so I'll have to double check. That was in the 1890s during one of the "great depressions".
Homelessness vs Hobo-code will be an eternal fight. People want to help the homeless, but not so much that they come flocking into the city.
And they are almost always invisible (by choice).
Idaho is also a small population state, but it's still 3x bigger than Vermont.
However, I'm not sure why Arkansas is not highlighted as a top gainer. It has the same net migration numbers as South Carolina, and a larger population than Idaho.
Of course the problem becomes within a few years: I'm sitting on a 550K property and the traffic sucks (again). I'll move somewhere and start a Chipotle. Cycle continues.
I don't see hard numbers anywhere, but assuming that the total migration numbers are within spitting distance of proportional to the population, California would also be, if not leading the list, close to the top in terms of total people entering the state as well.
It's not just high population to low population, because Florida as an example.
If the resource is tourist cash.
Eg, beach condos are getting 3-4x normal prices this summer and are still sold out.
It’s also hot as shit, and this is from someone who’s lived their entire life in the south.
No state income tax, warm weather, as much pro sports as CA or TX, and beaches on three sides
That is, until those moving in vote those policies out.
but yeah, you can just draw down arrows from NY and PA to FL. They're so pervasive there's a joke about their license plates... blue and yella will kill a fella. A play on the snake idiom, because of their awful driving.
NJ - Drive like they're in NYC, no turn signals, will try to merge/squeeze into 3 inches of space.
NY - Must not have lane rules, they just sit in the left lane regardless of speed.
PA - Highly aggressive and dangerous. Will tailgate you, will brake check you, will drive 30 over and punish you if you happen to block their path.
FL - Wildcard. Everyone is from one of the above, so who knows which you'll be dealing with.
If Texas and Florida housing is cheap, it's not necessarily because of Republicans. Texas has, comparatively, some pretty high property taxes for example. Sure, wages have been held down by business friendly conservative politics, but with remote work becoming more common, your wage isn't tied to the politics of where you live.
(my note: Texas, Florida, and North Carolina will eventually tilt more progressive from young folks born or who move there, and as older conservatives "age out" at a rate of about 1.8 million people/year [1])
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/american-m...
It also stops speculation because the property becomes an obligation that has to be taken care of.
alternate hypotheses:
remote work enabled more people to earn a high salary typically found in a large city or coastal area while moving to lower cost of living areas.
also, people who lost their work in industries heavily impacted by quarantine (hospitality, food, restaurant, retail) moved back home or in with family to save money.
Do that many dems really believe that their policies don't significantly result in an increased cost of living?
I thought this was a compromise dems knowingly and willingly made, but it seems lots of people don't want to admit low cost of living has anything to do with being a red state.
I've long thought that living in a blue city in a red state provides a pretty good balance.
This is such a crazy disconnect, though. They might not want to move to a "red state", but they "just happen" to like the ultimate result of red state policy.
>In fact if we dig one level deeper I'm willing to bet most of these moves are happening to liberal enclaves in republican states.
Sure, because they put more stock in maintaining their political self-identity and label than they do in accepting the fact that they might actually prefer living in a place that's the result of red state politics. Even if that's liberal enclave.
It's a form of self-denial.
People can't afford to live in expensive places the way they'd like to. What's cute most years in CA (I haven't seen Covid-data, which probably changes things) is that net migration among people making >100K is positive. So wealthy people are pushing others out. Yay free market?
Is there anything naturally "Republican" about having large amounts of land for (frequently still Democratic-leaning) cities to continue to sprawl into in red states, avoiding the crunch that hit the California cities that ran out of space earlier?
Another way of phrasing it: people want to move to lower population density.
Most people don't even vote. The most obvious thing I can see here is people are moving from high CoL areas to low CoL (which also tracks with the growth in remote work).
People might not want to admit to themselves that they want to be republicans, but they sure want to live wherever republican policy dominates.
When it comes to factors that affect CoL, both parties are pretty much bipartisan in their approach.
>but they sure want to live wherever republican policy dominates.
Because, historical, republican states have smaller cities, which mean less demand and lower CoL. Someone priced out of San Francisco isn’t going to find it cheaper to live in Phoenix than Chicago. As a result, prices are already shooting up and will probably do so until there is an equilibrium that follows a supply/demand curve.
Only a local partisan reality or influencing others can alter that, a Democrat migration can turn the entire country* Democrat if anyone coordinated, as only a few counties have to be swung just a little bit. I don't feel like this is a partisan observation, mathematically the opposite is not true like if you imagined a different nation that you didn't care with the same reality it is easy to notice that the opposition party does not have the numbers.
*Not all local representatives, just electoral college for Presidency, the entire Senate, most of the House of Representatives.
So it would require a SuperPAC to get people to move from Democratic areas to the select Republican and swing counties at once, or heavily helped by existing and pandemic net migration.
Comparatively the continual problems w/resource management (water, power, wildfires) in California seem relatively horrific to this outsider.
Historically small and mega fires swept though all the California forests, often burning 4x the amount that’s burned in this historic fire year. Human intervention to stop those burns has created very unhealthy forests. Having houses in all these areas that burn is just a bad idea and a lot of hubris about the extent of our control over nature.
Regulation to stop building in those area and enhance fire resistance of buildings is the solution, not more “freedom”. Housing developers have almost zero incentive to reduce their profit margin in order to fire proof the house or not build and thus not earn money.
And water use isn’t a solved issue in other states. Either they happen to have a wetter climate or they aren’t any better.
Power is a legitimate issue, but then I’d say California is actually doing pretty well because the climate change is a larger issue. Move fast and break things is better than doing nothing.
You arguing for more/better regulation speaks to the lack of competence in CA considering the time scales these issues have been ongoing.
And as an outsider, Texas seems very incompetent dealing with hurricanes and the power outage, which was rather predictable. The official’s then trying to scape goat issues that were not the primary cause does not inspire confidence.
But maybe we’re both biased towards our home states. An outsider from France probably would think both of them could do a lot better.
1) Weather
2) Cost of living: housing, property taxes
3) Quality of life: No commute, slower pace of life
In the process there is a cultural and political struggle underway, and it's the newcomers supplanting the old ways. I've had a few prospective buyers call and say that they are escaping the godless/liberal coast and headed back to conservative small-town America, but I have yet to have a single one of those actually convert to becoming a buyer, FWIW. Point being, I foresee it not being about people wanting to become Republicans, and more a demographic shift where many traditional red areas are going to turn purple, if not blue.
https://blogs.uofi.uis.edu/view/8598/380899833 (The Depth of Illinois Debt Problem and its Potential Consequences)
(disclosure: fled the state)
Or any of the blatant political favoritism people saw with who still had rights under covid restrictions and who didn't?
I think even people that used to be willing to risk it realized last year just where they stand in the eyes of the local politicians.
Even if it wasn't enough to for them to leave, it definitely was enough to prevent new arrivals.
Based on the limited census data we have, there is a small-to-mid possibility that it will become 14 Democrats and 3 Republicans in 2022. It will probably all be in the southern part of the state. I'd put it at even odds that in the northern part of the state, they redraw boundaries a little bit to shift some Republicans from Underwood (D) to Kinzinger (R) to increase the election odds for both.
If you lean Republican, you might think politics are broken. If you lean Democratic, you might think politics are exactly right.
Sure the violent crime is rough, but my understanding is that it was really concentrated and mostly the result of gang activity.
I want to see number of people moving in and out. That's good information. Percentages without magnitude are just confusing noise.
Where America’s developed areas are growing: ‘Way off into the horizon’[0]
(Washington Post -- paywall, sorry, but posting as relevant to this thread)
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/land-...