FORECASTS & TRENDS E-LETTER
by Gary D. Halbert
December 22, 2020

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Some Surprising Trends in US Population Growth

2. A Statistical Journal of the So-Called ‘Plague Year’

3. Why Are People Fleeing Blue States For Red States

Overview – Some Surprising Trends In US population Growth

We had a houseful of company from Wednesday of last week until yesterday, including our two newborn granddaughters (our first two grandchildren). It was a whirlwind five days of cooking, entertaining and loving on those grandbabies.

Also, last week was a slow time for news, as it usually is leading up to Christmas. There was little in the way of economic or market related news last week. As a result, I’ve chosen to reprint two articles below I think you’ll find very interesting.

The first article analyzes the last week’s surprising Census Bureau report on the latest trends in US population growth. The US Census Bureau released the findings of its latest population survey last week, and there were some big surprises. Perhaps the biggest surprise was the fact that US population growth was the slowest in our nation’s history for the year ended July 1, 2021. And there were other key findings which are discussed in the reprinted summary below.

Another article reprinted below discusses the increasing number of Americans fleeing so-called “Blue States” (with high taxes and regulation) for so-called “Red States” (where taxes and regulation are lower). These two articles should provide you some interesting reading as we usher out 2021. Let’s dive into the first article just below.

“A Statistical Journal of the Plague Year –
by Michael Barone, Washington Examiner

As a Christmas present to statistics lovers, the Census Bureau has released its estimates of the population of the nation and the 50 states as of July 1, 2021. The Bureau admits up front that, due to COVID, its numbers are subject to more than usual uncertainty. But overall, they provide important clues as to how the public has coped with the pandemic and how COVID may have changed the trajectory of national growth — and contraction.

A comparison of these estimates with the April 1, 2020 census covers almost exactly 15 of the first 16 months of the pandemic. The headline is that 2020-21 was the slowest growth year in U.S. history, with the population rising by only 0.1%. That’s even lower than the 0.5% growth in 1918-19, when the influenza epidemic killed more people than COVID in a United States with less than one-third our current population.

Any predictions that lockdowns would produce a spurt of births obviously were laughably wrong. Instead, we’ve had the biggest birth dearth in the nation’s history.

This and the “Great Resignation,” the withdrawal of a couple million from the workforce, look like results of demoralization. They’re the opposite, in any case, of the baby boom and the workforce surge that got started during World War II and flourished for two decades postwar.

Any predictions that lockdowns would produce a spurt of births obviously were laughably wrong. Instead, we’ve had the biggest birth dearth in the nation’s history.

The census estimates confirm reports of people fleeing crowded central cities starting at just about the time of the April 1 census. That’s apparent in the states with the nation’s four largest metropolitan areas: New York’s population declined 365,000 (-1.8%), California’s was down 300,000 (-0.8%) and Illinois’s down 141,000 (-1.1%). (I’ve rounded off population numbers to avoid the distraction of statistically insignificant digits.)

Also down, after a decade of gentrification growth, was the District of Columbia (-2.8%). Washington has been the fastest-growing metro area in the East for decades, but evidently no more. Maryland’s population declined in 2020-21 (-0.2%), and Virginia’s barely rose (+0.1%). The Biden administration failed to duplicate the New Deal, either legislatively or in capital area growth.

Altogether, 20 states lost population, from high-education Massachusetts (-0.6%) to climate-ideal Hawaii (-0.9%). Both were high-lockdown locales.

At the other end of that spectrum, percentage growth was highest in the Rocky Mountain West: Idaho (+3.4%), Utah (+2.2%), Montana (+1.8%), and Arizona (+1.7%).

And in Texas (+1.3%). That’s a big deal, because it’s the second-largest state, with a population over 29 million. Its 2020-21 population increase was 382,000, accounting for 86% of the national increase.

Florida also scored a similar percentage increase (+1.1%), with a population increase of 243,000. So the population of those two low-lockdown states increased by a total of 625,000, while the population of the other 48 states plus D.C. fell by 181,000.

You see similar contrasts when you compare the states by political preference. The 25 states that voted for former President Donald Trump increased their populations by 1,049,000, while the 25 states plus D.C. that voted for President Joe Biden saw their populations fall by 607,000.

If you set aside the eight marginal states, which no candidate carried by 5% or more, you find the solid Trump states gaining 694,000 people, the marginal states gaining 544,000, and the solid Biden states losing 796,000.

Or contrast the nine states with no state income tax, which gained 782,000 people, while the other 41 states plus D.C. lost 340,000. The 10 states with the highest income tax rates lost 704,000 people.

No one knows whether these trends will continue for some time, and no trend continues forever. But COVID and the responses to COVID seem to have done quantifiable damage to sectors of society dominated by the cultural Left. Public school enrollments are down, college and university enrollments are down, anti-Trump media patronage is down, restaurants are closing, and concerts are canceled.

The flight from high-tax to low-tax states was already in progress pre-COVID, and Sunbelt migration has been apparent for half a century. But what we seem to be seeing during this plague year is the withdrawal of significant numbers of people from what had been comfortable left-wing cocoons and their dispersion to odd corners of the landscape.

In a politics that often looks like a battle between metropole and heartland, the metropole seems to be losing ground, while the heartland is hanging on or even booming.

Why Are People Fleeing Blue States For Red States In Droves?
by Robert Simon, Epoch Times

According to Clay Travis on Dec. 22’s Clay Travis-Buck Sexton Radio Show, [the replacement for Rush Limbaugh] the blue states are hemorrhaging people. From the transcript:

“And they came out with the data on, the Census data for 2021, and—this is interesting—New York was the number one state to lose population. Around 320,000 New Yorkers bailed on the state. California was the second biggest loser, around us 250K or so, followed by Illinois.

“When you add in others like Michigan, about a million have departed blue states in 2021.”

Travis continued: “I want to build on this in a moment, but these are the states that added population: Texas, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Utah, Tennessee, Idaho, and Nevada. Almost all of those states red states. What is going on here with the great sorting of America?”

What, indeed? This exodus from blue states—although obviously not quite as perilous as the flight from Egypt—has been going on for years and has its own motivations that may not come directly from Yahweh but have their own spiritual, or at least moral, component—a desire to live openly in harmony with your views.

It also has ebbs and flows. Right now the flow is very much on, seeming to spike any time Anthony Fauci or Joe Biden open their mouths, ditto governors of those same blue states who seem to be outbidding each other in the race to lock their citizens in their homes and inoculate and mask their children with absolutely nothing to show for it.

Fauci has now told us to disinvite our unvaccinated relatives from Christmas. My guess from that is a whole lot more people are looking for a realtor. (I have heard some have offices in Los Angeles and Franklin, Tennessee to facilitate the move. House-hunting around here has become very tricky.)

I wrote about this internal migration the other day and about how I was considering writing a book about it.

I would perforce be weighing in on the question of just who are these people.

Are they, as some commenters on my previous piece said, people looking for a cheap, tax-free ride, who carry their liberal or progressive ideas with them and are actually polluters of red state values? They should stay out and stop ruining their new state.

Of course some, maybe a number, of these types exist. Everything does in a nation of three hundred and thirty million.

But I would argue, the contrary is more prevalent. The majority of these internal migrants are as strong advocates for conservatism and our founding principles as the original residents. In uprooting themselves and making the trek across the country to start a new life, they have demonstrated that.

They also demonstrate it by their actions when they arrive, very often joining, or even helping found, organizations to protect constitutionally republican government that can be in jeopardy even in red states from the left or from local RINOS.

That’s been my observation, but of course I am biased because I am one of them.

Nevertheless, one of the commenters underscored that view by pointing out how those who have actually experienced communism are almost always the most staunch opponents of any leftism, no matter where they are.

You can see that here at The Epoch Times where many refugees from Chinese communist oppression work or contribute. I saw it the nine months I spent in Prague working on a film. The Czechs knew communism first hand and had no interest in going anywhere near it.

It’s absurd to say that we Americans experienced anything nearly as bad as the Chinese people do and the Czechs did, but having visited California and New York lately, what I saw did not give me second thoughts about having left. Rather, I had a feeling of relief that I did.

Another who believes as I do about these internal migrants is Clay Travis, himself a Tennessean by birth, who said on the same show:

“I was talking about the fact that where I live in the Nashville area, I meet people all the time that are moving into my neighborhood. I live in an area called Franklin, Tennessee, which is just south of Nashville about 15 or 20 miles in Williamson County. And our schools have stayed open. We were open all last year.

“And so as a result been a lot of parents and a lot of families that have moved here. And what I see is New York, California, and Illinois, most commonly, Chicago area is where people are bailing on Illinois, and I asked ’em why they came here, and they all say, to a person, man and woman, they moved because they were finally fed up with the politics and COVID was the tipping point.”

Doesn’t sound like a bunch of liberals to me. But I’ll know more when I do my research.

FINALLY: Congrats to Clay and Buck for having the number one talk radio show in the nation after only six months. Yes, you inherited the slot of the incomparable Rush, but if you didn’t do a good job yourselves, the fans would have left by now. Kudos.” END QUOTE

Best holiday regards,

Gary D. Halbert

Gary's Between the Lines column: US Economy Is Strong, But Most Americans In The Dumps – Why?

 

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