Kerby Anderson

In one of her songs, Carole King asked, “Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore?” It’s a good question. People in America move around even more than when she wrote that song. I have discussed these national trends in a previous Point of View booklet on “American Realignment.” Americans have been moving from high-tax states to low-tax states. Conservatives and Christians have been having more kids than liberals and secularists.

Those trends continue. For example, the states with the highest personal income growth are Texas, Idaho, Nevada, Florida, North Carolina, and Arkansas. California ranked last along with Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Hawaii.

California’s food and accommodation growth was the second lowest in the country, likely due to the creation of a state council that dictates wages and work conditions at fast-food franchises. California employers may be struggling to find workers because so many have moved to lower-cost and low-tax states.

Yesterday, I talked about some global trends and explained that futurists guessed wrong about which nations would be dominant in this century. Those same futurists also suggested that mayors would be more influential in the world and this country because of the significant growth of major cities.

That has not happened. A professor at Columbia University has observed a “doom loop” in New York City. More people work from home, office space is less valuable, and the city gets less revenue from real estate taxes. People with money, whose work no longer requires them to be in the city, move out, taking their tax dollars and retail spending with them. In ten of the largest cities, half of all offices sit empty. America’s big cities lost two million people between 2020 and 2022.

This is not what the world futurists predicted, and we should take note.