States that are losing population as the country as a whole is growing

 Washington Examiner Editorial:

For an entire human lifetime, the state of Illinois has been a laggard in population growth. It has lost eight congressional districts since the 1950s. But new census estimates released last week show that this decade, something very special has happened.

The state, affectionately referred to by many as either the “Deadbeat State” (for its practice of handing out IOUs in place of payments to vendors) or “Madiganstan” (after the powerful speaker-for-life of its state House), has actually been losing population every year since 2013.

In fact, the land of Lincoln has lost a net 308,000 residents over the last seven years and a quarter million since the last decennial census. Both numbers are larger than the population of any city in Illinois except for the megalopolis of Chicago. And Illinois’s rapid shrinkage is occurring even as the United States grew by nearly 7% since the last census.

Illinois’s state government is extraordinarily left-wing, and its taxes are extraordinarily high. Its Supreme Court stubbornly stands athwart desperately needed pension reforms, without which the state’s finances simply cannot be saved. Opportunity there is dying under the weight of corruption and the stranglehold of special interests such as labor unions.

Illinois is not alone. The same census data point to two other big states that are also driving away residents with similarly impractical, ideologically leftist policies ⁠— California and New York.

Andrew Cuomo’s appalling mismanagement of the coronavirus is not the only culprit in New York’s long-running demise, but it has made an already bad situation much worse. Those residents who were not already leaving because of high taxes and an arrogant big government are fleeing because futile coronavirus lockdowns are making life even less tolerable than usual. New York, as a consequence, has also lost about 42,000 residents in the last decade. Its population peaked in 2015, and in the time since, it has lost about 320,000.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in California, which has at least gained population since 2010 but began losing it in 2019, with about 70,000 net residents vanishing in 2020. Population growth in the Golden State had already slowed to a crawl, but now, residents are actually giving up and abandoning its beautiful, scenic inhabited areas because they have no choice.

Those jobs that haven’t been lost due to quixotic environmentalism and its resultant rolling blackouts are now being killed off by a statewide political elite that cannot even be bothered to follow its own coronavirus shutdown rules.

To make matters worse, the leftists in the state legislature made sure to cut off the lifeline that the gig economy had afforded so many during the pandemic. The law, known universally by its bill number, Assembly Bill 5, became an effective ban on most contract work. From the time of its enactment until the courts and then the voters finally intervened, it was strangling the careers of everyone from freelance journalists to truck-driving owner-operators. In the interim, thousands likely fled the state and established residence elsewhere just so that they could continue working.

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People are moving to states like Texas and Florida where taxes are low and budgets are balanced.  Who can blame them?  The three big losers are in the clutches of the evils of liberalism and they can't seem to break free.