{"id":159651,"date":"2023-05-08T12:22:15","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T19:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=159651"},"modified":"2023-05-08T12:22:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T19:22:15","slug":"americas-atlas-shrugged-moment-has-already-arrived-new-irs-data-show-jonathan-miltimor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=159651","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s \u2018Atlas Shrugged\u2019 Moment Has Already Arrived, New IRS Data Show ~ Jonathan Miltimor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Atlanta, GA…It\u2019s not just high taxes that are driving people out of cities. There are other costs\u2014moral, social, and cultural\u2014associated with spurning property rights and celebrating looting. Last September, billionaire Ken Griffin announced he was pulling up stakes and moving Citadel\u2014his gigantic hedge fund\u2014from Chicago to Miami.\u00a0 The Windy City was out of control,\u00a0he told<\/a>\u00a0Bloomberg, something that dawned on him after a colleague made a coffee run and was robbed by a thief who put \u201ca gun to his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Image Credit: Kurt Christensen, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret that Griffin\u2019s exit is part of a much larger migration taking place across America.<\/p>\n

Data show that several populous blue states\u2014California, New York, and Illinois among them\u2014have been losing population and companies for years. In 2021\u00a0Forbes\u00a0wrote about \u201cleftugees<\/a>\u201d fleeing blue states for red ones. A few years before that,\u00a0a headline<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0The Hill\u00a0touched on \u201cthe great exodus out of America’s blue cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

New IRS data, however, show the speed with which blue states are losing taxpayers\u2014and their adjusted gross income (AGI)\u2014is increasing. A recent\u00a0Wall Street Journal\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0found that more than 100,000 people left Illinois in 2021, taking with them some $11 billion in AGI, nearly double its 2019 total. For New York it was $24.5 billion, an increase of more than 150 percent from 2019. California, meanwhile, saw its AGI loss ($29 billion) more than triple since 2019.<\/p>\n

That people are migrating from these states is important. But who is migrating is equally important, and the data paint a bleak picture for these states. Taxpayers giving up on the Prairie State and the Empire State made about $35,000 more per year than new arrivals. For Florida, the data are even more stark. The average income for a new arrival to the Sunshine State was roughly $150,000\u2014more than double those leaving.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, the geese with the golden eggs are flying away,\u201d\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0economist Daniel Mitchell, referring to the IRS data.<\/p>\n

Going Off the Rails<\/p>\n

Needless to say, these data do not bode well for the future of these states. But not everyone is concerned.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic\u00a0accepts the reality<\/a>\u00a0that a major migration is underway, one that undercuts the conventional wisdom that \u201cDemocratic states are the future,\u201d but rejects the idea that they are \u201cdying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City isn\u2019t some dystopian wasteland where no one can see their future,\u201d\u00a0writes<\/a>\u00a0Jerusalem Demsas.<\/p>\n

Demsas may be right, but it\u2019s hard to deny there is a dystopian character to what we\u2019re witnessing in many major US cities\u2014including surging crime, failing schools, and social unrest.<\/p>\n

Yet there are reasons to believe these problems are going to get worse, not better. Losing wealth-creators and affluent workers doesn\u2019t just affect the economic landscape. It also affects the political landscape.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0a recent\u00a0WSJ\u00a0op-ed<\/a>, Allysia Finley pointed out this primarily works to the political benefit of public sector unions and welfare activists.<\/p>\n

\u201cCities are losing the voters who keep their leaders from going off the rails,\u201d Finley writes, noting that Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was defeated by mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who ran to her left.<\/p>\n

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Johnson\u2019s margin of victory was relatively thin, some 20,000 votes. That\u2019s a fraction of the 175,000 people who left Cook County from 2020-2022, Finley points out, and it stands to reason that these are the very people the city needs to get back \u201con the rails.\u201d<\/p>\n

One can see the cyclical nature of this phenomenon. As cities and blue states become more confiscatory and hostile to property rights, they drive out wealthier people and wealth creators. And as prosperous people leave, the politics become more confiscatory and hostile to property rights. And the cycle continues.<\/p>\n

\u2018I Don\u2019t Put Companies in New York\u2019<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something very Randian in this phenomenon. After all, the basic plot of\u00a0Atlas Shrugged<\/a>\u00a0involves a small group of industrialists living in a dystopian future in which they struggle to keep their businesses afloat while fighting against an oppressive government and mooching politicians. Eventually they say to hell with it and walk away, taking with them their wealth, creativity, and innovations.<\/p>\n

This is very similar to what we\u2019re witnessing, except that we\u2019re not talking about just a few rich industrialists like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden (two of the heroes of\u00a0Atlas Shrugged). It\u2019s not just the Ken Griffins who are leaving, but hundreds of thousands of wealth creators who are voting with their feet, and opting for greener pastures of opportunity.<\/p>\n

This is a more realistic version of\u00a0Atlas Shrugged<\/a>. The novel was in many ways an epic mystery, Agatha Christie meets Cecil B. DeMille. People are disappearing, and we don\u2019t know why. As Taggart and Rearden struggle (and eventually form a love affair), we keep hearing about some mysterious figure: John Galt.<\/p>\n

Eventually we of course learn that Galt is a disgruntled visionary and entrepreneur, and he\u2019s inviting the best and brightest in society to join him in abandoning the looters and leaving them to their own fate. He explains why in a long speech near the end of the novel, which touches on Rand\u2019s philosophy of voluntaryism, individualism, and capitalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the men who have vanished, the men you hated, yet dreaded to lose, it is I who have taken them away from you. Do not attempt to find us. We do not choose to be found. Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind. We are on strike against self-immolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good story-telling, but it\u2019s not exactly believable. What we\u2019re witnessing, however, is: a mass movement of people who are tired of having the fruits of their labor seized to fund increasingly dysfunctional government systems.<\/p>\n

We often forget that entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of an economy. Societies without it wither away. And many of these states and cities have become hostile to entrepreneurship and wealth creation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t put companies here in New York anymore\u2026or California,\u201d Shark Tank entrepreneur Kevin O\u2019Leary recently told CNN. \u201cThose states are uninvestable. The policy here is insane. The taxes are too high.\u201d<\/p>\n