The South rises again

 Daily Caller:

Over the past few years, states in the American South have come to economically surpass the Northeast, owing to policies like lower taxes and better business environments spurring prosperity and population growth, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The gross domestic product of Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee surpassed the cumulative economy of the Northeast in 2020 for the first time since data has been tracked and has continued to exceed growth since, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis compiled by Bloomberg. The growth comes as businesses and people flock to the region seeking affordability, job opportunities, lighter tax and regulation laws and freedom from dense urban areas, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF. (RELATED: Here’s Why The Biden Admin’s Multi-Billion Dollar EV Charging Program Has Short-Circuited)

“The main driver of growth differentials between the states is public policy,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “This includes tax and regulatory policy, both of which vary wildly between states. Because the South, on average, has states with lower tax burdens, less burdensome regulation, better business climates, and more worker freedoms, these states also average faster growth.”

Five Northeastern states are in the top six in terms of tax burdens in 2023, led by New York, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey, with burdens of 12.47%, 11.14%, 10.28%, 9.83% and 9.76%, respectively, according to data from WalletHub. In contrast, Southern states posting huge growth were well below the median in terms of tax burdens, with Florida ranking 46th with a tax burden of just 6.33% and Tennessee ranking 47th with 6.22%, according to WalletHub.

“They also attract people to move there from states like California, Illinois, and New York — states that have extremely unfavorable conditions to sustainable economic growth,” Antoni told the DCNF. “During the pandemic, remote work became more mainstream so that people were no longer stuck living near a corporate headquarters or central office in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. People chose to leave for lower-tax states, which also often are safer places to live with lower crime rates.”

The South has seen the largest increase of any U.S. region in terms of population from July 2020 to July 2023, recording an increase of more than 3.6 million people, while the West added 235,424 people, according to data from the Census Bureau analyzed by the DCNF. The Northeast and Midwest’s populations shrank by 446,960 and 60,511 in that time period, respectively.

States with the biggest outflows of people from July 2020 to July 2023 were California, New York and Illinois, whose populations declined by 538,007, 533,494 and 240,668, according to the Census Bureau. Texas notched the biggest increase in the time period as transplants from other states like California flocked to the area, adding over 1.2 million people, followed by Florida at 1 million and North Carolina at 381,679.
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The states that are losing population are burdened by government greed.  Their tax rates are close to double what rates are in the states that are growing. I suspect that the heating costs in the South are also lower than in places like New York and Illinois.

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