Americans are waving goodbye to high-tax cities where living costs are pricing them out to move to cheaper, pro-business boomtowns in the South and West
- Low-tax Republican states with lower living costs are seeing population growth
- They’re saying farewell to homelessness and poor job prospects in blue cities
- But New York and some other cities are rebounding from the coronavirus slump
Americans are ‘voting with their feet’ and waving goodbye to eye-watering taxes, high living costs and bad job prospects in Democrat-leaning areas for better deals in red states, experts told DailyMail.com.
Recent data from the US Census Bureau show how such states as New York, Illinois, and Hawaii saw their populations shrink between 2021 and 2022, while Florida, Texas, Montana, and South Dakota saw big population gains.
A similar pattern plays out at the county level. Arizona‘s Maricopa County was the fastest-growing in the US, adding 56,831 residents in 2022, a gain of 1.3 percent against 2021.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County, California, posted a loss of 90,704 people.
Mark Perry, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, said the overall population drift was from Democrat-run states to mostly Republican-administered boomtowns in the South and West of the country.
‘Americans are moving from blue states that are more economically stagnant, fiscally unhealthy states with higher tax burdens and unfriendly business climates with higher energy and housing costs and fewer economic and job opportunities,’ Perry said.
They’re opting for ‘fiscally sound red states that are more economically vibrant, dynamic and business-friendly, with lower tax and regulatory burdens, lower energy, and housing costs and more economic and job opportunities.’
The five counties which lost the most residents are all located in high-tax states, namely California, Illinois, and New York. They have also been wracked by homelessness, drug taking and high rents and living costs.
California is the epicenter of America’s homelessness crisis. About a third of the entire US homeless population — 171,521 people — is in California, and Los Angeles hosts around 65,000 of them.
By contrast, counties experiencing the largest influx of people were in Arizona, Texas, and Florida, where taxes are significantly lower. The destination areas typically have more affordable housing and fewer problems like crime and vagrancy.
According to the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit policy group, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Nevada, are especially attractive to arrivals because they do not levy taxes on workers’ wages.
At the other end, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon, are losing people because of their double-digit income tax rates, which wage earners have to pay on top of their federal and local taxes.
People also move around to overcome rising living costs — and the biggest expense for most people is rent.
