Will Democrats Ever Learn?
– By Howard Sierer –
Utah’s economy along with those of other Republican-led and Republican-leaning states have far-outperformed states led by Democrats since the pandemic’s onset. Will Democrats ever learn?
In recent decades, technology and globalization fostered a “knowledge economy” powered by white-collar college graduates who migrated to big city metropolitan areas on the West Coast and Northeast. Wages, traffic congestion and housing costs grew far faster than in other parts of the country.
Along with all its other impacts, the Covid-19 pandemic changed the country’s economic geography.
Moody’s Analytics developed a proprietary index measuring state pandemic recovery. Metrics include the value of goods and services produced, employment, retail sales and new-home listings. Eleven of the 15 states with the highest scores voted Republican; eight of the bottom 10 voted Democratic.
Compared to February 2020 just before the pandemic began, Republican-led states have 341,000 more jobs now than they did then. Democrat led states are still short 1.3 million jobs. Lockdowns and unemployment benefits that exceeded wages took their toll.
Migration played a significant role in the jobs picture. Forty-six million people moved to a different ZIP Code in the year through February 2022, the most in any 12-month period in records going back to 2010, according to Moody’s analysis of Equifax data. Texas, Florida and North Carolina gained the most while California, New York and Illinois were the big losers – in more ways than one.
Working remotely became an option for many, allowing them to choose to live in places with a better climate, lower cost housing, less traffic and lower taxes. They may not have been motivated by politics per se, but seeking a better life, they abandoned Democratic states and chose Republican ones.
An Economic Innovation Group study found that large urban areas with high proportions of commuters lost residents in the 12 months through July 2021. Among that group, large urban counties with the highest median home values experienced the biggest declines. In the 10 states that gained the most people from moves between April 2020 and June 2021, the typical home cost 23% less than the typical home in the 10 that lost the most residents to moves.
State income taxes played a role as well. States with the highest in-migration have an average maximum income-tax rate of 3.8% on individuals. Four of them – Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Nevada – have no income tax at all. The 10 states that lost the most residents to moves have an 8% average maximum tax rate.
These results reflect how the progressive wing of the Democratic Party views our economy primarily as source of tax revenue to fund their radical income redistribution and social goals. They have rejected equal opportunity that rewards talent, ambition and hard work. Instead, they have embraced “economic equity,” code words that mean equality of outcomes. This goal sounds eerily like Marxism to most Americans.
With this mindset, progressives see the economy as a pie of fixed size that they must restructure and divide among the population so as to achieve their view of equity. They believe they must command – that is take over – the economy to produce their favored goods and services to achieve their social goals.
Progressives’ recent legislation directing over $369 billion of taxpayers’ money to green technologies in the name of climate change is an ineffective and painful example of how progressives intend to take over the economy, favoring some industries and punishing others.
Since they know better than we do, they ignore consumer preferences as expressed by purchases in a free market of goods and services. They give little thought to governments’ role in fostering a growing market economy that enlarges the economic pie and provides opportunity for all citizens.
In contrast, conservatives see individual and corporate incomes as belonging to those who earned them. Tax revenue should be “confiscated” only for purposes that can best or only be performed by the government. National defense, the Treasury and Federal Reserve and certain regulatory functions such as those performed by the FAA, FCC, FDA, SEC and other similar entities come immediately to mind.
Underlying the conservative approach to government is recognition that progress, be it economic, technological or social, is best achieved when individuals are free to use their talents and ambition to better themselves in a free market, benefitting society as a whole in the process.
The Democratic Party has fallen under the sway of its radical progressive elite that comprises only 15% of its party membership. We can only hope that the dramatic differences in states recovering from the pandemic will be a learning experience for the rest of the party. It’s fair to ask that if Democrats are unable to regain their traditional footing in the center-left by rejecting failed far-left progressive policies, when will they ever learn?
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