Boston Globe: "At a loss - A litany of woes, from taxes to high cost of housing, is driving many residents out of Massachusetts, and the state is struggling to woo others to come here, report says"
More than 2.2 million natives of Massachusetts now live elsewhere in the country, while 1.2 million people from other states live here. Massachusetts is the country's ninth worst in attracting residents from other states, the study shows. It ranked 48th in terms of losing residents to other states.Later in the article, the Globe suggests that, aside from the cold and high taxes, people are turned off by "the deep blue hue of the state's politics." Elsewhere in today's Globe is this section in an article by Jeff Jacoby about how Bay State taxes are spent in a deeply-Democratic government:
"The problem is that we just can't get people to come to Massachusetts as much as they want to leave," said Andrew Sum, the center's director and author of the report. "We need to start asking what we can do to make Massachusetts a more desirable place to live, why people don't want to come here to live."
Between 2000 and 2007, only Louisiana - which saw thousands flee after Hurricane Katrina - and New York lost more residents to other states, according to the report. More than 300,000 residents - about 5 percent of the state's population - left Massachusetts during that time, while the state's fertility rate ranked 46 out of 50 states.
The Boston Globe recently reported that retirements are suddenly spiking at the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. Why? Because a new law taking effect in 2009 slightly reduces benefits for workers who retire before age 65. The major change: As of next year, retirees will have to pay 15 percent of their health insurance premium. Current retirees get free healthcare for life. That's in addition to their pensions, of course. MBTA workers can retire with a full pension after just 23 years on the job, at which point they are perfectly free to find another government job and get right back on the public payroll.It's not exactly pitchforks and torches at Beacon Hill, but the backlash is that Massachusetts residents are trekking south to find bigger houses, lower taxes, and more opportunity.
Such double-dipping is common in the public sector, just like so many other lucrative perks that government employees take for granted and most private employees can only dream about. "The nation is dividing into two classes of workers: those who have government benefits and those who don't," USA Today noted in 2007. "The gap is accelerating in every way - pensions, medical benefits, retirement ages." According to the Congressional Research Service, the pension collected by the average private-sector retiree is worth less than half of what a typical government retiree can expect. If you don't have your snout in the government trough, you can expect to work ever-longer hours and pay ever-higher taxes and fees to support those who do.
Those, for example, like Michael Mulhern. He is the 40-something former MBTA general manager who "retired" in 2005, began collecting a $130,000 annual pension, then hired on as head of the MBTA retirement fund, a job that pays about $225,000 annually. Mulhern's total take: more than $350,000 a year. He is just one illustration of a huge problem growing more urgent by the day - the staggering sums that taxpayers are shelling out for the care and feeding of avaricious public employees. In Massachusetts and nationwide, a backlash is coming.
7 comments:
Problem One: It's margin nibbling. The exodus of 40,000 people a year represents ~0.006% of the Massachusetts population.
Problem Two: The rate of shrinkage is unremarkable. By itself, the city of Pittsburgh loses a fourth as many residents per year as all of Massachusetts does. Miami loses almost twice as many as Pittsburgh. Both Pennsylvania and Florida have lower personal tax rates than Massachusetts.
Problem Three: It's unclear whether the statistics cited ("the country's ninth worst in attracting residents from other states; ranked 48th in terms of losing residents to other states") refer to the rate of loss, or to straight census numbers. The wording of the article is unclear, but suggests that the cites may be based on totals ("only Louisiana and New York lost more residents to other states"). If this is the case, it's unsurprising that Massachusetts and its many millions of residents would come off worse than the three dozen U.S. states with lesser populations.
Some state has to be 50th in each of these categories, and therefore "worst." The larger concern is the state's proportional ranking, both external and internal: is it doing substantially better or worse than the average for other states, and can the state's population easily absorb the rate of change? (Example: 0.006% of attrition would punish Alaska a lot more than California.)
The "human interest" anecdote about the man who pays even more of his income for the cleansing emotions he feels driving out of Massachusetts and towards less restrictive gun laws every day is statistically uncommon. It's also a bit of an absurdity, but we can go with statistically uncommon.
It's not margin nibbling.
The people leaving are the productive taxpayers. The ones moving in are tax users. And, who can blame them. Romney signed a bill into law as Governor that guarantees free healthcare to any penniless illegal alien who sets foot in Massachusetts and calls it home.
That money's gotta come from somewhere, and believe it or not, a lot of us didn't feel like paying for it.
Even if the net gain/loss in body count was zero, the Commonwealth would still be in trouble.
As for gun owners moving out of state, it might be statistically uncommon given the low percentage of gun owners there in the first place, but among gun owners, it's a major trend. And it's symbolic of the trend that we're seeing where people are choosing to live under a government that doesn't demand that everyone suckle from the teat of the State for all their wants and needs.
The population drain is so bad, that the state leaders have actually come out and said they will be aggressively counting illegals to keep the census numbers up for 2010, lest they lose a seat in Congress.
And, here's another reason for the list: Sex changes for 7-year-olds. Guess who gets to pay for 'em, now that RomneyCare is the law of the land?
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Disgruntled gun owners abandoning their Massachusetts residency is a "major trend"?
Uh, sure. That seems plausible.
Do you know how to read?
"...but among gun owners, it's a major trend."
What part of that is hard to process?
Mostly, that it's probably not happening at all.
Incredulity is a wonderful gift. Try it sometime.
Yeah, that's it. Gun owners are loving life in Massachusetts, and would never dream of moving to a state where their rights and freedom are respected and upheld.
What are you? Twelve?
As a lifelong resident of California (I'm 54) I can see the same thing happening here (higher taxes driving out the middle class) in the near future.
My wife and I always thought that we would spend the rest of our lives here, however when my professional daughter and her husband had to move to Texas to afford a decent house on their upper middle class incomes we started to become concerned, and for the first time have started considering relocating to another state when we retire (it won't be Massachusetts).
The havenot's can only squeeze the haves for so long before the haves decide to leave the tax burden behind. With California considering universal health care akin to Massachusetts plan and with our legislators looking for new and more creative ways to tax us (up to $1.80 per six pack of beer among others) it's only a matter of time before Adam Smith's dictum of "people will look out for their own self interest first" will come in to play.
At least I still have the right to vote with my feet.
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