There's a wave of political, social, and economic segregation going on in the United States right now. There has been a fair amount of speculation as to where all this is going; could the United States become the "Untied" States in the near future? It's not impossible. I've speculated about this possibility for some time now, and it's interesting to note that the economic segregation appears to be widening, as the productive people, the people with ideas, the people with enterprise and purpose, are increasingly leaving the high-tax, high-regulation blue states for the much more inviting business environments of the red states.
Some fascinating data has emerged from a meeting of two of these inviting red states, between Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas's Republican Governor Greg Abbot, and an interesting turn of phrase as well: An economic "iron curtain."
A new economic iron curtain is falling across America as the "Boom Belt" — an 11-state powerhouse in the U.S. Southeast — shatters records and challenges the traditional financial dominance of New York and Chicago.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined forces in Miami on Tuesday to celebrate a $9 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) region that is now outpacing every other quadrant of the country in population, jobs and capital investment.
"I often tell people, as Governor of Florida, my job is to closely follow California, Illinois, New York, so I can do precisely the opposite of what they do," DeSantis said during the panel held at the Pérez Art Museum. "Florida's had more adjusted gross income move into our state since I've been governor than has ever moved into any state in the history of the United States."
These successes, as well as the failures of the blue states, can't be denied by the American left forever. Nor can the outmigration of anyone in the blue states who might be looking into starting a business. It's not universal; there are plenty of enterprising people, for example, who call California home, and who don't want to leave. That's understandable; home is home. But this is a trend that will only accelerate, to the detriment of the blue states.
This segregation could be the basis of a national divorce if it is taken to an extreme. Note the names of the primary boom states, and that they are all in the American southeast - far from the northeastern and left coast states that are being drained of population and resources.
The governors spotlighted how Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas now generate $9 trillion in annual GDP, trailing only the U.S. and China globally, while absorbing 70% of all U.S. population growth in the last five years.
The migration has been fueled by more than just sunshine; it is a tactical retreat from a wave of tax-the-rich proposals sweeping through blue-state legislatures including California, New York and now Washington.
"We're in the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. The founding fathers, they wanted a system based on the consent of the government… They wanted to have a rule of law and they wanted some of this stuff, particularly private property, to not just be subjected to those types of whims," DeSantis said.
"Hence, in Texas, even though we have never had a state income tax, we wanted to make sure that future generations would not be able to impose an income tax, so we made income taxes unconstitutional in the state of Texas," Abbott said. "We made a wealth tax unconstitutional. We made a death tax unconstitutional, and as [TXSE's] Jim Lee pointed out, we made a transactions tax unconstitutional."
These are all solid, business-friendly moves. Here's the question: Will the blue states learn from any of this?
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This could be the map of two nations born of one, and that birth won't be an easy one. It's a safe bet that the blue states, as long as they remain blue states, will blame their economic woes on the same things they always have: Anything but themselves. There will be no long, hard looks in the mirror, no omphaloskepsis, on the part of blue leaders of blue states. That's not how they work. That's not how they have ever worked. No, the blame, the streams of propaganda, will be aimed at the red states.
That's not a recipe for a good time.
Dividing the country by winners and losers won't end well, even though the responsibility for those wins and losses is firmly with the political establishments and voters of both groups. The politics of envy, after all, rules in the American left, and that's how any division of prosperity and penury will be cast: "They took what they have from you," leftist pols will shout at their constituents, and it's only a matter of time before they want to try to take all that back.
Here's how we avoid that:
"I know that there's been a lot of very healthy competition between states like Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Georgia, some of these. And I think that's really, really good," DeSantis noted. "When Greg's doing stuff, people say, ‘Look [at] what Texas just did.’"
Yes, that's good - but California, Washington, Colorado, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois should look at what Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Georgia are doing. That's a much better path than the one the left has followed in the United States for almost half a century now. And it's a much better alternative than the civil strife that is very likely to arise of this economic iron curtain drops any further.
