California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to spend much of his time gratuitously attacking well-governed, Republican-led states around the country -- doing so in a transparent effort to garner publicity among his party's national base. His ambition-rooted motivation in this pursuit is not much of a secret, given his obvious presidential aspirations, which are likely to materialize in the 2028 cycle, or possibly even sooner. We've covered a number of his outbursts, which are often directed at Florida, whose governor confronted Newsom in a nationally-televised debate in November. Ron DeSantis cleaned Newsom's clock on the merits.
In fact, the debate was over before it began, based solely on the dramatically contrasting governing results in Florida and California. These outcomes speak for themselves, as do the corresponding population shifts within these two states. On Newsom's watch, California has shed population for three consecutive years. Prior to that, the state had never once lost net population, let alone enough witness enough of an exodus to cost it a Congressional seat. Florida, on the other hand, has grown and boomed. Among the pieces of evidence DeSantis cited in the fiery forum was this truthful observation about the demand for moving trucks heading out of Newsom's state:
The governor added: 'What California represents is the Biden-Harris agenda on steroids.' He noted that Newsom is the first California leader to see the state lose population rather than gain. 'They actually at one point, ran out of U-Hauls in the state of California because so many people were leaving,' DeSantis said at the start of a debate filled with a lot of tension and cross-talk.
A Jan. 3, 2022, news release published by moving company U-Haul reported that it had rented out so many trucks to Californians moving out of the state that it ran out of inventory. "California remained the top state for out-migration, but its net loss of U-Haul trucks wasn’t as severe as in 2020," the U-Haul news release stated. "That can be partially attributed to the fact that U-Haul simply ran out of inventory to meet customer demand for outbound equipment."
That was two years ago. Here are the very latest numbers from UHaul, which reflect domestic in- and out-migration trends:
2023 U-Haul Growth Indexhttps://t.co/P9w0Q6As5g pic.twitter.com/LalrYs29oV
— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) January 2, 2024
Texas netted the largest number of movers in one-way U-Haul® equipment in 2023, marking the third consecutive year it has finished atop the U-Haul Growth Index. Florida ranks right behind Texas among growth states for the third year in a row, followed by North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee...For the fourth year in a row, California reflected the largest net loss of one-way movers. Other bottom-five states for growth are Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts. New York ranks 43rd.
Texas and Florida dominated, again, and red states took the top six slots on the list. People are voting with their feet. The five worst-performing states were blue states. Illinois and Massachusetts were the runners-up to dead-last...California. Again. These are not coincidences. People are voting with their feet and moving where opportunity and freedom await them, leaving failed and sclerotic models behind in the dust. Last year, Bloomberg reported on these patterns of migration and the resulting shift in clout and wealth:
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For the first time, six fast-growing states in the South — Florida, Texas, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee — are contributing more to the national GDP than the Northeast, with its Washington-New York-Boston corridor, in government figures going back to the 1990s. The switch happened during the pandemic and shows no signs of reverting. A flood of transplants helped steer about $100 billion in new income to the Southeast in 2020 and 2021 alone, while the Northeast bled out about $60 billion, based on an analysis of recently published Internal Revenue Service data. The Southeast accounted for more than two-thirds of all job growth across the US since early 2020, almost doubling its pre-pandemic share. And it was home to 10 of the 15 fastest-growing American large cities.
Business Insider followed up with a story published just after Christmas, headlined, "The Future of the US Economy is in the South." Will places like California take note of reality, wake up, and adjust? Eh, I might be awhile. These are the sorts of things they're up to:
Major retailers in California are now required to have gender-neutral toy aisles under a new state law. The law, which went into effect Monday, stems from a 2021 bill in the California legislature requiring toy retailers with a physical location in the state and at least 500 employees "to maintain a gender-neutral section or area to be labeled at the discretion of the retailer."... Stores failing to comply with the new law could be subjected to a $250 penalty for the first violation, and up to $500 for subsequent infractions, the bill text outlined.
And this:
Pizza Hut is set to lay off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in Southern California in 2024, ahead of a new California state law that boosts the fast-food minimum wage from $16 to $20 per hour. https://t.co/AftRg9T8Z8 pic.twitter.com/hqLkbxrgMP
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) December 28, 2023
And, as noted yesterday, this:
California to offer 700,000 illegal immigrants free healthcare as deficit soars and population shrinks https://t.co/LoqpiuSnFo
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) December 31, 2023
UHaul may need to increase its outbound inventory again.
