March 7, 2013

The central irony of 21st Century American politics

From the Wall Street Journal:
The Reverse-Joads of California
by Allysia Finley 
Low- and middle-income residents are fleeing the state. Sacramento's liberal policies may bear much of the blame.
Over the past two decades, a net 3.4 million people have moved out of California for other states. But contrary to conservative lore, there has been no millionaires' march to Texas or other states with no income tax. In fact, since 2005 California has experienced a net in-migration of households earning more than $200,000, according to the U.S. Census's American Community Survey. 
As it happens, most of California's outward-bound migrants are low- to middle-income, with relatively little education: those typically employed in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality and to some extent natural-resource extraction. Their median household income is about $40,000—two-thirds of the statewide median—and about 95% earn less than $80,000. Only one in 10 has a college degree, compared with 30% of California's population. Roughly 40% of the people leaving are Hispanic. 
Even while California's Hispanic population has grown by more than 1.5 million since 2005, thanks to high birth rates and foreign immigration, two Hispanics have moved out for every one that has moved in from another state. 
By contrast, four Hispanics from other states have settled in Texas and Arizona for every three that have left. 

The central paradox of American political life is that blacks and Latinos tend to do better in Republican states while affluent whites do best in Democratic states.

31 comments:

Anonymous said...

"As it happens, most of California's outward-bound migrants are low- to middle-income, with relatively little education: those typically employed in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality and to some extent natural-resource extraction."

Wow, California has become Mexico.
Mexican elites push its poor and illiterate up north, and California elites push its down-and-out eastward.

Create a problem and then push out the problem.

Anonymous said...

http://www.amren.com/news/2013/03/lawyer-states-main-witness-in-george-zimmerman-murder-case-lied/

smoking gun now baked bun.

Peter the Shark said...

The central paradox of American political life is that blacks and Latinos tend to do better in Republican states while affluent whites do best in Democratic states.

Democratic elites design all their policies around the assumption that everyone has a 120+ IQ, long time horizons and is willing to make short term sacrifices for the greater good. I.e, down deep, everyone is an educated WASP or Jew who went to a good college and our laws and economic policies should be designed to achieve that. It's just the racists and greedy businessmen that keep everyone from achieving their potential. Because a lot of Democratic policy types tend to come from sheltered affluent communities where most people are educated WASPS and Jews maybe they even really believe this.

Republicans are somewhat more realistic about human nature and the distribution of human capabilities.

Laguna Beach Fogey said...

This aligns with my own experience working in wealth management.

In recent years I've noticed increasing numbers of HNW clients from other parts of the country moving to Orange County. Some of them are setting up primary residence in the area, while others are buying second homes for themselves or their children.

No doubt they are attracted by housing prices. Or maybe they want to be closer to Asian markets. But I think the main reason is that Southern California is still such a beautuful place to live.

Anonymous said...

Steve your point is correct, with birth rates droppings from 4 kids to 2 kids for immirgrant momies and California receiivng less as time goes on since Mexico is having less babies, California in the 2020's barring stupid things like an amensty could start losing a little hispanic population.

Anonymous said...

There are some upper-middle class whites or hispanics that moved to Arizona or Texas. I hear of them a lot. Granted, if you are under 15 dollars an hr Phoneix or Tucson is a lot cheaper in rent than LA or OC. Also, the years from 2005 to 2008 there were many moving, However, moving has slowed down so the stats are a little dated.

Anonymous said...

Well, yes, the higher taxes don't attract the conservative types to Orange County or San Diego that complain and moved. The fastest growth city in OC is Irvine a lot of foreign born chinese have moved in recently. Outside of the Bay Counties, California counties are only around 71 or 72 highest in income Ventura and Orange County in the top 100. Some Texas counties are in the top 25 in income. So, the situation is more complex, upper middle folks from OC moved to Fort Bend Texas to get away from the Mexicans.

Anonymous said...

The Republican states are cheaper but Blacks are not a fast growing up so unless they moved to Georgia in droves or Florida or North Carolina they are not going to changed politics much. Hispanics can since they are growing at faster rates.

stari_momak said...

Of course no mention of foreign immigration playing a role in pushing out the lower and middle class. After all, if 'liberal policies' such as land use restriction are making things so bad for the poor in California, why do the foreign poor still settle in the state.

Anonymous said...

Well, Wall Street is typical of conservatives they blame it all on regulation and zoing. The biggest rent and housing increases happen under President Bush in California it was realtors jacking up prices and a lack of regulating how houses where being sold. Any Mexican with no income could pay a 600,0000 house in Santa Ana.

Anonymous said...

As for factoies they are disappaering because of automation or going overseas, they are not coming back. Call center work more likely to stay since people complain about the Philipines and India. Your best bet with factory is old white guys that are machnists retire that where most of the openings are in the future.

Anonymous said...

Also, Republicans complain that illegals are not on the dole in Texas, bull. The Center for immirgation studies show more on the dole in Texas than Orange County or San Diego for both native and immirgant but San Diego or OC are not La which is what Republicans love to use. Its cheaper in Houston than Anaheim so illegals say si let's moved to Houston to do construcation instead of being a janorial or short order cook in Anaheim.

Jim Bowery said...

I don't see that as a paradox if by "affluent whites" you are speaking of the managerial elite. Of course invaders will move on, like locusts, to unexploited territory. Of course the traitors who aided and abetted them from positions of trust and authority will have secured for themselves the defector's payoff in the Prisoner's Dilemma of civilization.

Anonymous said...

Democratic elites design all their policies around the assumption that everyone has a 120+ IQ, long time horizons and is willing to make short term sacrifices for the greater good.


Really? The Democratic elites are in favor of welfare, abortion and gun control because they believe that "everyone has a 120+ IQ, long time horizons and is willing to make short term sacrifices for the greater good"?

What a maroon!

Dutch Boy said...

Economic elites are attracted to cheap labor venues whereas working stiffs are not.

Anonymous said...

I'd say "the affluent and well connected do best in Democratic states". Life in these hotbeds of liberalism is staggeringly cliquish. It doesn't matter what your skin color is, if you're well connected you're going to do well.

Anonymous said...

THe Mexicans have overloaded Cali to such an extent that even they are forced to go.
- The irony is that as labor has been squeezed down to subsistance wages, the lifestyles of the very rich are made easier due to the super abundance of cheap servants.
As Stve said, the ultimate beneficiaries of the left's drive to flood the USA with the third world are the very rich, supposedly the people that they hate.

jody said...

i don't believe it's true that millionares are not leaving california. i think they are. i've talked to some. i think even more will begin to leave now after the 2012 election. as the 1 party CA state government begins to raise taxes even more on the wealthy, they'll slowly but steadily head for the exits. sure, it doesn't affect the very wealthy. they'll stay.

businesses have been leaving CA for years. no reason to believe that business owners are not millionaire proprietors of those operations who are also leaving with their business.

what's happening is that wealthy chinese immigrants are moving to california, washington, and canada, the west coast of north america, and buying up residential property, in anticipation that things might go south in china in the future. an easy way to hedge their bets, buying a 1 million dollar house in the US or canada. also makes it easy for them to have american kids for that chain immigration plan.

this is probably what's driving part of the return of increase in housing prices in these places. for sure, that's what's happening in canada. in some cities it's hard to get affordable housing because of the chinese.

jody said...

"Your best bet with factory is old white guys that are machnists retire that where most of the openings are in the future."

old white guys, the people who built america yet are now the focus of our liberal politicians' ire, are some of the only employable americans left, and are soaking up most of the good jobs even in their 60s. they are retiring later, and locking younger people out of lots of blue collar positions.

not that it's a bad thing. the old white guys are great and do great work. the younger generation is sloppy, less skilled, and dumber by comparison. they do inferior work. i talk to skilled technicians and laborers about this all the time. getting good apprentices in these fields is almost impossible. once these old white guys are gone, america truly will have a "good worker shortage".

funny how the politicians always clamor about a "shortage of good workers" except they miss the mark by a mile. they talk about fields where there is no impeding shortage of good workers, and never talk about fields where there is one.

"Also, Republicans complain that illegals are not on the dole in Texas, bull."

i believe many republicans are aware of the tenuous demographic situation in texas. some of them are definitely talking about it and know that mexicans are poised to turn texas permanently blue in the future if something is not done to stop it.

government program sucking mexicans are on the radar screen of some republicans. not all of them are oblivious.

we are already witnessing their effects in colorado and nevada.

Reg Cæsar said...

smoking gun now baked bun.

That's a crude way to describe African steatopygy. I was just about to make a sandwich...

Reg Cæsar said...

...so illegals say si let's moved to Houston to do construcation instead of being a janorial or short order cook in Anaheim. [sic, sic, sic, etc.]

Let alone dressing up as el raton Miguelito!

Anonymous said...

The Joad theory explains why I never meet a California transplant in New York. Why would a bodega worker move from a nice crowded hut in LA to an even more expensive and smaller abode in good old, cold, New York, just to work in a bodega, again. Even if he aspires to something more ambitious like construction or landscaping, he'll struggle to find work in the winter. According to a chart in this article, New York ranks fiftieth, yes, FIFTIETH, in inflow from CA. This can't just be economics, that's a Red Sox Fan level of hatred.

Reg Cæsar said...

...New York ranks fiftieth, yes, FIFTIETH, in inflow from CA. This can't just be economics, that's a Red Sox Fan level of hatred.

No it doesn't. That's NET inflow. All it means is more people move to Cal from NY than vice versa, (What that implies about New York, though...)

One would expect the largest inflow/outflow figures to be between the megastates. There's just more people to move.

meth laboratory of democracy said...

I never did understand all that 25-year-old techno-geek GOTV-maven boasting about, "We're going to turn Texas into a blue state" since, technically, that has to imply some other adjacent or nearby region became somehow "reddened" in the process--as long as we're sticking to this silly journalese framework of treating "red"/"blue" as chemical properties

Anonymous said...

I'm not like those on the right of the political spectrum: I think California's future is better off than Texas' for this reason. I see the hispanic population peaking at just under 50% with the Asian population starting to surge. Texas has no such possible scenario.

Mike said...

Ms. Finley tells us 40% of those leaving are Hispanic. The other 60% are not black.

What you are seeing is the out migration of retirees, or those close to retirement.

There is a lot left unsaid in that article.

Anonymous said...


I'm not like those on the right of the political spectrum: I think California's future is better off than Texas' for this reason. I see the hispanic population peaking at just under 50% with the Asian population starting to surge. Texas has no such possible scenario. That's a possibly but Texas has been receiving more asians since they discover its cheaper. In Austin asians are going to surpassed blacks but there are rich asians from China, Kong Kong or Taiwan that prefer California even with the hgher taxes.
3/8/13, 12:12 AM

Anonymous said...

Also, if Anmesty doesn't happen if aging illegals might return home. And the youth population is going down in Mexico. Central America still has enough babies. What might happen is some illegals will stay in the coastial counties to do low skilled work while others will moved on. Maybe in 2025 Los Angeles and Anaheim might faced a maid shortage for the first time in decades.

David said...

>Ms. Finley tells us 40% of those leaving are Hispanic. The other 60% are not black.<

Yup.

According to the utterly predictable WSJ, the story isn't that whites are fleeing the state. It's that the persistence of serious taxes and laws ("Sacramento's liberal policies" doesn't mean "immigration-friendly policies") is scaring away a minority of "vibrant" wage slaves.

Anonymous said...

Well, the Monterray oil shale if can be got at more then Whites and Second and third genertion Mexicans would stay in Kern, Frenso and so forth. The oil shale is good since it could lead to less farming in the Central Part of California since oil companies will buy up land from farmers, hence less illegal immirgants at least in the Central Part of the state.

Anonymous said...

In Los Angeles County, a minimum wage worker would have to put in 137 hours per week, the report said. In Orange County, that figure climbs to 156 hours.

Southern California's housing recovery: An interactive map

Six California counties were among the 10 most expensive: San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin, Orange, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz.
Granted, there are servant jobs in these counties but I bet if some of the illegals can get there money together they will start moving since few places still penalized for employment. Probably the poorest who don't have cars will be stuck in La, or Anaheim or San Jose.