That hurts - from Mississippi

By Jim Stergios
July 11th, 2008

I have referenced the Stephen Moore-Arthur Laffer report on Rich States, Poor States, and its overall message that tax policy does matter for people and business locational decisions. I know the question of business creation and population growth is more nuanced than that, but as I was reading Stephanie Ebbert’s piece in the Sunday Globe about the hundreds of thousands of dollars we are spending to boost our Census numbers, I wondered if we aren’t as usual on trying to manage the message rather than addressing the underlying problem.

So, a friend from Mississippi emails the Moore-Laffer report and notes that we are soon to have the political oomph of the Mockingbird and magnolia state. Check out table 1 on page 15 of the RS/PS report, which suggests that Massachusetts is among the bottom 10 in the nation in terms of cumulative domestic migration. Huh? It means that we lost 330K people over 10 years (1997-2006). Connecticut lost 110K, and at the very bottom of the list is California at -1.3 million and New York at -1.96 million.

At the top (winners) is Florida at +1.6 million, Arizona at 770K, and even colder states like Washington (+218K). Folks, can we, uh, start acting like adults and figure this out?