Shopping Around for a Better Life

[Geee]

Town Hall:

Thanks, California! Thanks for your monstrous spending and absurd regulatory overreach! America needs you. We need Connecticut and Illinois, too! We need you the way we needed the Soviet Union, as models of failure, to warn us what happens if we believe those who say, "Government can."

Moving to California was once the dream for many Americans. Its population grew at almost triple the national average -- until 1990. Then big government, in the form of endless regulation and taxes, killed much of the dream. In the last decade, 2 million people left California.

Many of them moved to Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington or Wyoming. More on what makes those states special in a moment.

When the USSR died, overthrown by its own citizens' hatred of central planning, I assumed the world would acknowledge that big government is a nightmare. But people don't. Our brains are programmed to believe that "next time, central planning will help." So, many people forget the lesson of the USSR.

Fortunately, they can still watch what's happening right now in California, Illinois and Connecticut. OK, those states are not totalitarian dictatorships, but they tax and micromanage so much that they will soon approach bankruptcy, cut services and stagnate.

And Americans have an advantage Soviet citizens never had: 50 states. If we live in a big-government state, we can move. I did.

[nickydog]

Well, John, maybe rich Americans can hop from state to state, but most Americans have to have a job first before they can hop to another state.