1 Damn, Dave, you and I must keep the same hours. We hit the POST button at almost exactly the same time! You want to see something scary on this chart? Look at Detroit. It looks like a spurting blood-vessel. The only creatures moving in to Detroit are wild animals retaking the urban wasteland.

2 Really interesting. 

I love the Houston comments.  We are leaving L.A. this summer... headed to Utah, but what originally motivated us to consider moving this year was a job opportunity to Houston.  That didn't work out, but we would gladly endure the monstrous summers there again -- of all the places we've lived (Vermont, Boston, Chicago, Indiana, here) it feels the most like home to us. 

But we have high hopes for Utah.

3 OK, I'll risk the snarky comments and ask... has anyone gotten the map to work on a Mac?  I can highlight a county, but it is either incredibly slow or fails to load the lines graphic. 

4

5 Hmm seems like most people from my county are high-tailin' it to Florida. Good luck with those 20ft Everglade pythons, Grandma.

6 Y-not, I'm using a Mac and it worked fine for me.

7 Never mind... I got it to work.  Just too impatient, I guess!

8 Thanks, Joanie.
I think I was just being too impatient.

9

settle down there girl.

 

...

 

wait, I have daughters, I know better than to say that.

10 Looking at Detroit, it looks like there's one stream coming in from right around DC.

Detroit: Taking the corruption we taught Chicago to the big leagues!

11 I am assuming that Dave is a Dallas boy by this post. Ugh.

12 I grew up there, I live in central TX now.

13 The surprise for me: Honolulu.

14 Does any county in NJ have a black line?  Wow.

15 Yeah but the problem is the losers run  from the red states, and they promptly forget why they left because they begin voting for the same policies and attitudes in their new homes that drove them out in the first place

16 Not surprised by the maps. Not at all.

I'm currently one of the red-liners out of SoCal, and a blue-liner into Texas.

I waited too damn long to make the move, but better late than never.

17

LOL I mean the blue (Dem) states, sorry!

18 Ooops -- inbound are black lines, not blue. Just bein' PC...and waiting for my new glasses to get here!

19 The map is a black hole.  Go there and you'll be sucked in for hours.

20 That didn't work out, but we would gladly endure the monstrous summers there again -- of all the places we've lived (Vermont, Boston, Chicago, Indiana, here) it feels the most like home to us.

Sure, the summer is long and hot and humid, and we've got bugs the size of penny loafers, but the people are nice, there's plenty to do, the tarball-less beaches of the Gulf are close, and you're always invited to the barbeque.  My in-laws just laugh when anyone asks if they miss upstate New York.

21 PS-- those red lines from Houston down to Mexico are just my family after an INS raid.

22 Trump is correct. My own state is hoovering in New Jerseyans at a prodigious rate. And they vote to up the taxes because, "after all, what's another hundred here or there. Have you seen the tax rates we fled?"
Jackasses.

23 A big risk of the Obama federal power grab is reducing the differences between the states. Labor mobility is one of the best things about America. You don't like the laws of your state -- vote with your feet.

Once we have a national sales tax (VAT) and Obama successfully unionizes the entire health care sector in every state ... the differences will be less.

Liberals are never content to live their lives in peace -- they have to force the rest of us to live our lives how they would.

24

SoCal is hemorrhaging and the only visible replacements are coming from New York. 

See: California and Boned

25 Cute map.  Too bad it doesn't work well in Firefox/Linux.  Oh well.  not your fault Dave, I know, just wanted to bitch anyway.

26

I'm a native Houstonian, actually 6th generation native.  I posted this elsewhere in relation to the flow graphs:

As for Houston, I know its only a matter of time. Because of its energy heavy industry, it takes awhile for it to be affected by an economic downturn. Eventually though, as everyone cuts back, the money in Houston will become more scarce. In the meantime, weÂ’ll have people trying to change Houston into California or New York, thus causing chaos. Then, as the rest of the country starts improving, people will move away from heat and humidity, and local GDP will drop some more.

For us natives, the trick is to keep the temporary labor force from enacting the type of laws that convinced them to leave the climate of California and New England.

27 Cute map.  Too bad it doesn't work well in Firefox/Linux.  Oh well.  not your fault Dave, I know, just wanted to bitch anyway.

Posted by: chemjeff at June 19, 2010 11:17 AM (Gk/wA)

It should work in Firefox.  I'm on Firefox and I posted this in another thread about 3 days ago.  Worked fine for me...but I don't use Linux.

28 Yeah but the problem is the losers run  from the red states, and they promptly forget why they left because they begin voting for the same policies and attitudes in their new homes that drove them out in the first place

Posted by: Trump at June 19, 2010 10:52 AM (hK2Ya)

That's because they blame all their problems on the rich and move somewhere else for a job.

29 The thing to remember is that this information is only drawn from people who actually file taxes.  It does not show true migration patterns of the entire population.  For example, LA looks to be bleeding out.  But since the map does not show the movements of people who do not file taxes it may actually be replacing those that flee...albeit with non-taxing paying citizenry.

Ole'!

30 Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Travis counties already went for Obama in 2008, this migration will probably just make it worse.

31 Y'all liberals coming to my Houston should just sit down and shut up. DO NOT VOTE because we dont want to be like your loser pansy-assed expensive liberal utopia that you just ran from. Go back home if you want to play politics.

32 Really?  Bexar did?

That sucks...I assumed all the dipshits that are born in San Antonio got sucked into Austin's gravity, like satellites to a rogue moon.

33 I live in Houston, and I resemble those remarks!

Our mosquitoes are not huge! If they were, they'd be easier to shoot.

No, it's the fact that somewhere along the line they crossed with wasps, and now, although the the bugs are tiny, they raise welts like poison ivy.

Other than that, agreed.

Oh, and I'm not a native either, but I got here as soon as I could, around '80, in the last big wave of northern liberal immigration.

Unlike many, I kept my head down, my mouth shut, and my ears open, and learned a lot, including not to be a liberal anymore.

From this, it looks like it may be time to print up another run of "We Don't Care How You Did It Up North!" bumper stickers.

34 Wow, I live in So Cal, and we are big bloody red lines outward.

35 I live in Houston and this is the miserable time of the year...so I'm not even going to get mad about the snarky Houston comment.  Mainly because the heat and humidity are killing me.

I personally don't want all these liberals moving into my state. They are escaping their oppressive taxes in their current state and will come here and vote people in who will impose the same stupid taxes...and then wonder why Texas is just as expensive as California. 

Also, I don't want to have to have 15 different trash can that I have to use to separate my trash in, small little Prius's are to be squashed by pick up trucks, and good luck with taking guns away from Texans. 

Arizona used to be a red-red state until all the libs from Cali moved in.  Now it is a purple state.

36

It's amazing cuz IMHO Houston in the summer is not fit for human habitation..

...my God..the air there is not made of gases..it's liquid...hot fucking liquid

37 If you think Dallas is sucking in the bodies, you should click on Bexar County(San Antonio). Wowzers!

A lot of our inbound this year are DC metro gov civilians. (IOW stupid commie libs)

In my experience half of them catch on soon after they get here because they have former mil friends and family. The other half stay lib, get seriously upset that everybody on the east side loves Lamar Smith, and they leave for 'green'er pastures after four years. Like upthread, the problem is keeping their votes from doing any damage before they go. The silver lining is that like most libs, they hardly ever vote and they're way too busy to keep track of registering, and actually going to the polling place on election day.

38 Been in Houston since 46 and you have to get used to breathing water. People say you get acclimated to the summer, but that is BS.

39

38 Been in Houston since 46 and you have to get used to breathing water. People say you get acclimated to the summer, but that is BS

I have family in Houston area that moved there from the midwest..

..they say that they just got used to it down there..

Bullshit..they have changed their lifestyles..and it's like they don't even realize it..

..the only time they're outdoors is to get to their cars..

40 I was on a trip with a bunch of corporate types from Houston during July in Jackson Hole Wy and we all automatically turned the ac on in the SUV even though it was 35 degrees in the morning.

41

Clicking on Duval County, FL leaves one with the impression that folks can't wait to get away when, in truth, with two naval bases, his is a huge military town. Folks leave here left and right whether they care to or not.

Really. It's not so bad here.

42

I had to rescue my neighbor's two bulldogs in southwest Houston one hellish summer. One died of a heat stroke a couple of hours later. They had been outside a grand total of ninety minutes.

Bulldogs die there if they escape from their yards - deadly humidity.

 

43

38 Been in Houston since 46 and you have to get used to breathing water. People say you get acclimated to the summer, but that is BS

I was raised in Maryland, which I used to think of as a hot, humid climate, but my family and husband are New Englanders and I went to school in the north so I'm basically a cold-weather gal.  However, we found that we did actually adjust to the heat/humidity to some extent.  Yes, it was a lifestyle change, but it wasn't wholly dependent on air conditioning.  Our trick was to find a couple of good cantinas and, of course, the famous Gingerman near Rice U.  After adjusting our attitudes we would willing sit outside -- as long as we had a margarita or brew in our mitts. 

I really liked Houston.  As someone said, the people there are great, especially the men whom I found to be really gentlemanly.  It also had the second-best restaurants of the cities where we've lived/traveled (Chicago being the best) with great food and terrific service (you couldn't pay me to go to a Boston restaurant nowadays).  When we lived there (90s) they lost the Oilers and the Astrodome was kind of a crappy area, but it looks like they've addressed both those issues.  The downside is that it does seem to be trending liberal and I gather the illegals issue is becoming more of a problem. But I think it can survive.  After all, libs ultimately want an easy, comfortable lifestyle so they'll always trend to Boston, San Francisco, Seattle...

44 I hated Houston! 

45 Live in Singapore for a while and then get back to me on how humid Houston is.

46 LOL, Y-not. My hair is past wavy and is nice and curly now, with a chance of frizzy.

47 Check out Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona.

48 Posted by: Mama AJ at June 19, 2010 12:42 PM

Yeah. When I lived there my hair was about 4 inches shorter purely from the curl.  Definitely a challenging climate for hairstyles.  On the other hand, my skin was great, whereas out here in SoCal, even after only a few years, it's become really dry.  Especially my feet for some reason. 

49 The story and maps are fundamentally flawed. It is NOT high taxes and high cost of living that kick people out, as much as undocumented demographics.

LA and San Diego had been high cost, relatively high taxes from 1920-1975. But they pulled in lots of White folks who could EARN lots, and enjoy beautiful weather, great schools (best in the nation), high-tech employment, etc.

What happened?

A TIDAL WAVE of MEXICANS. Not shown in any map is about 15 million (at least) Mexicans pouring into LA and San Diego. For example, LA has the second highest concentrations of Mexicans outside Mexico City.

Pour millions of poor, illiterate, low-IQ, people into an area that does not need lots of that labor and you get ... the riots you saw after the Lakers won.

Detroit? A Black run city. Portland, or Seattle, are as high cost, have nearly the same brutal weather, high taxes, but being "Whitopias" attract lots of young people.

"People are policy." There is nothing set in stone mandating Black run cities be somewhere between DC and Detroit, but they have been since the 1960's and don't seem to be changing any time soon.

You can predict a city's economic success or failure and future almost entirely by the people who live there. Lots of middle class White Americans? No matter what the tax regime and regulations, likely a  success (though it has implications on the margins). Have a ton of Mexicans and Blacks? Your city is doomed to failure.

Therefore, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and yes TEXAS are all doomed to failure. The only places that can possibly remain productive are Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Vermont, NH, and possibly WI.

Yes this means America is over. Its already written. America is doomed because its nothing more than Mexico Norte. Filled with the children of illegals, who have allegiance to Mexico and the same characteristics that turned Mexico into the nation it is today. Perhaps a slightly wealthier Mexico, but that's all. It will still be Mexico.

Arizona and Texas are filled with children from Mexico. The kids there are all Mexican. That does not make them bad people, but it does make them guaranteed to produce a society just like Mexico.

50 #22: My own state is hoovering in. . .

The only time I hear "hoovering" is on BBC America.

51 Posted by: whiskey at June 19, 2010 12:56 PM

Well, I've lived in Vermont and it may be lily white but it blows.  It, like Minnesota, has an onerous tax structure and lots of entitlement programs. 

52 Dave's right about the "bird-size" mosquitoes in Houston. What's worse is that they sound like Apache helicopters as they attack.

53 Uh, Houston has a ton of Mexicans and Blacks.  Dallas has a fair amount as well.  Austin, not so much. 

54 wws @ 52....where in East Texas?

55 Unfortunately, according to morons here and at other conservative blogs, these assholes bring the belief along with them in the Democrats and their policies that are actually responsible for driving them away from their home states in the first place.

If there ever is a successful secession movement, the former Red states had better have a visa-only policy for former Blue state travellers or it will all be for naught.

56 24

SoCal is hemorrhaging and the only visible replacements are coming from New York. 

See: California and Boned

Posted by: Burn the Witch at June 19, 2010 11:14 AM (fLHQe)

That's not good.

57

Ah, my beloved California has suffered mightily over the last 40 years from the infestation of liberal cockroaches who've fucked up the state and propose to fuck it up even worse in an attempt to "improve" it.

At a lunch recently I was the only Californian at a table of six. The others - liberal, of course - had moved here relatively recently from NY, MA, NJ, and IL.

All northeastern liberals - go the hell back where you came from, and take your moronic liberal bullshit notions with you. Alternatively, we could just throw a tent over LA, SF and parts of SD (now facing liberals moving from SF), fumigate, and start all over.

58 My wife and I have been talking about Texas. But if we move there, the first thing I'm going to do is get rid of the CA license plates, and assure Texans that I'm a refugee from, not an advocate of, the People's Republic of California.

59 54 Uh, Houston has a ton of Mexicans and Blacks.  Dallas has a fair amount as well.  Austin, not so much. 

And by all accounts Austin is the most liberal city in Texas.  Interesting correlation if you ask me.

60 #60 spam removal request. Code: RED

61 many of the people moving to the southern states are not going there for jobs they are moving there to retire

62 My point was that the remark that 'lots of blacks and mexicans doom a city' is pretty much debunked by Texas.   Houston and Dallas do pretty well offering good jobs and low costs of living and are not doomed. 

63 Mariopa County in AZ is interesting. Lots of folks moving there.

I worry about the influx into Texas. Back in the '80's, Austin had a mayor who issued an open invitation for Californians to relocate here (particularly those of the ghey variety). Since then, Austin has gone from a laid back little town to the liberal mecca of the state.

As someone pointed out, those blue staters are like locusts, once they consume and screw up all available resources in one area, the migrate to another area and proceed to screw it up, too.

64 Dave, what part of Dallas are you from?

65

Born in Dallas, walked to school through miles of farmland, came out to recess and looked through the fence at the longhorn cattle on the other side,  -- all within the city limits. Could buy a hammer but not the nails on Sunday on account of the Blue Laws, and the whole team prayed to the Good Lord before the game to give us victory. My how times have changed!

That old Texas is a distant memory, and we knew it was slipping away and into the nameless norm that's become suburban America. So it continues. I remember when Plano, TX was little more than a gas station and a feed store on the side of the road. Couldn't have been more a few hundred people in and around it. 2000 census put it at 600,000 people.

Never ceases to amaze that these people leave the places of low opportunity and head to Texas, but they take their failed ideas and their voting patterns with them. Once settled in, they immediately try to arrange the place more like it was back in the home they fled. Maddening, really. Maddening.

66 mpur in Texas (kicking Mexico's ass since 1836) at June 19, 2010 01:48 PM

I gotta tell ya, buckaroo: a Texas liberal would be a right-wing wacko in California!

Having just arrived in Lone Star Land (north of Austin for now, but I'm hopin'), I'm pleased to see that lefty radicalism is tame, tame, tame compared to my birth state.

I'm also diggin' the lower cost of living and freedom from the clutches of Antonio "We clean your toilets!" Villaraigosa and the other nutjobs who turned a once-great state into a bankrupt sewer....

67 Yep.

68

Never ceases to amaze that these people leave the places of low opportunity and head to Texas, but they take their failed ideas and their voting patterns with them. Once settled in, they immediately try to arrange the place more like it was back in the home they fled. Maddening, really. Maddening.

Damn straight it is. Welcome to my world. My blood boils when I hear a group of northeastern liberal transplants babbling about how we Californians need all kinds of social programs and liberal attitudes. Hell, they had those social programs and liberal attitudes where they came from. If they were so great, why didn't they stay there?

Answer: because those places had become unliveable, over-taxed and over-regulated, strictly and solely because of those social programs and attitudes. Yet they fail to make the connection.

69 I moved from New Mexico to Houston about 12 years ago during dot com days as there weren't (and never are) many decent jobs in NM. Being a software engineer I looked at Houston on Monster.com and there were literally hundreds of jobs posted. Within a month I had a job (and a significant wage increase) and moved to Houston. I took it for common sense that you move to where the jobs are. I changed jobs a couple of times after the dot com bust but was always able to find a new job fairly quickly. It's been a good ride even though the summers are brutal. And if things turn sour in Houston I'll move somewhere else.

70 The net result?  Conservative bastions become more liberal as they are infiltrated by the exodus from the lib areas.

71 The heat and humidity are terrible in Houston, and only slightly less so in   most of the other big Texas cities. West Texas isn't humid, but most of the big cities are east of there.

I just keep reminding myself of how nice the winters ( and early spring and late fall) usually are, except during some of the sudden wet northers. I plan most of my outdoor activities for the fall/winter/spring, and in the summer I spend more time indoors. Or vacation where its cooler, just as midwesterners move down here in the winter to warm up.

In most of the US, with the exception of California, you're going to be either freezing your butt off or sweating to death during one part of the year.

72 go H-town!  we wear it as a badge of honor that some yankee writer from new yawk who was in town some years back after a hurricane or a flood or something labeled Houston "a mosquito-infested hell-hole".

with our miles of asphalt (sizzlin' in the summer!) and no-zoning laws, we are a sprawling, non-esthetic spectacle that nonetheless supports a robust economy, comparatively low unemployment and taxes, affordable life-styles, and a welcoming business atmosphere.

idiot-in-chief is trying seriously to mess with NASA & the drilling industry. i have plenty of friends and acquaintances being affected in both fields and who knows how it will end?

what a lot of people don't know about H-town is the depth of its cultural/arts community, the high level of philanthropy, and for "foodies" -- the number and diversity of Houston's restaurant scene rivals that of most major US cities.  Bird hunting is outstanding and salt-water fishing opportunities abound (or did, iykwim).

i'm fortunate to be able to leave the sweltering summers behind and go camp and fish in the rockies, british columbia, pacific northwest, new brunswick, nova scotia, even the land of fruits & nuts, cali. but i always come home.

Houston is under-appreciated.  Even our skyline is pretty sweet, comparatively speaking! 

am increasingly wary of Perry.

73 texasmamma @ 73

I remember a sports writer from NYC saying that shit during the '95(?) NBA Finals. the Rockets ended up winning the title over the Knicks.
Mosquito-Infested Hell Hole - 1
Douchebag Yankee City - 0.

74 the immigrant libs have screwed up colorado too, but that may be turning back around.  dare i say, "i hope"?

75 fish @74 -- yeah, that rings a bell;  maybe the quote wasn't after a hurricane, but during those finals.  good times lol; the town breathlessly wondering if olajuwon's (sp?) fasting during ramadan was gonna' affect his play

76  San Diego has had a large outflow - housing costs are lower but still too high, jobs are scarce

77

That's no joke about Colorado. Texans coming to ski were the butt of jokes in Colorado, and they'd roll their eyes if they found out you're from Texas. But nowadays my friends in Colorado say to me, "Come back! Save us from the Californians!" To any moron living in Boulder: sympathies.

78 boulder: colorado as
austin: texas

79 No one from the county where I grew up seems to have moved more than two counties away, much less out of the state.

*srednop*

80 So, basically, the people who screwed up CA and the Northeast are going to screw up Texas too.
Breed bigger mosquitoes.

81 Yankee, Go Home!!!

82 Interestingly,  Marion County,  Indiana, is about half and half.  Red lines all head south,  to Atlanta, Florida,  and texas.  Black lines coming in seem to be mostly from Michigan.

I am one county south of Mation,  and our lines are mostly black.  We have had a couple small industries open here this year,  and our tax rates are lower than Marion County's (Indianapolis).

83 Lots of HVAC tech jobs in Houston of course. What sucks for me is that my industry, insurance claims, has relocated most of their jobs to that pretentious big hair Dallas.

84 Dang, just moved to Houston from Austin for, uh well you know, a job.

Less than 200 miles geographically, yet a great deal further socio-politically. When the top rated Houston wacky morning radio zoo crew spends the majority of their time mocking and hatin' on ohblahblah, you know you're in a different world. A better, more rational world- though sweatier and nastier just the same.

85 http://louis8945.blog.zoznam.sk/ louistime

86

I'm moving from MA to Texas, just flew in from trying to find a place to stay in Irving while I find a job/house. First, damn there are a lot of Mexicans, seemed like half the folks I talked to couldn't speak a word of English. Second, the apartments I looked at, man they're disgusting. Anyone have a line for a decent apartment or house rental at $600 for 6 months, from folks who will leave it better than when moved in, in the North Dallas/Irving, etc. area, let me know.

87

Without reading any of the comments (so I don't know if this thought is already posted), I wanted to get a thought down.

The problem will be, these people move to where there are low taxes and more jobs, but have no understanding of why this place has low taxes and more jobs.  They have no understanding that the policies of the places they left caused the high taxes and regulatory nightmare, which in turn caused there to be less jobs.

 

So, these people will move here in search of low taxes and more jobs, but will vote for all the things they voted for in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, etc.  Within 10 years, Texas will begin to look like a northeast state with high taxes, ridiculous spending, regulatory hell, and taxes will rise exponentially and jobs will leave, and the people that moved there will not understand why or how it happened.

 

I have seen this on a smaller level with parents who move to the burbs in search of a better life and education for their children.  My wife works in a school district and is directly involved with superintendent hearings that have to be held in order to suspend kids.  These parents leave the bad city schools to the bordering suburb, which used to have good schools.  But, they think it is merely a product of location.  They donÂ’t understand that the schools are better in the burbs because of the discipline, expectations and values that parents had placed on their children.  So, these relocated kids still act like they are in the city schools – fighting, using drugs, not studying, being disruptive in class, etc.  Instead of siding with the school and trying to get their kid to straighten up, the parents of these re-located kids back the kids at every instance and fight the school, and say things like, and this is a direct quote, “he never got in trouble for this in the city schools” or “kids smoke in the halls in the city schools all the time, whatÂ’s the big deal”.  These parents donÂ’t understand that it is not location that decides the outcome, but community values and parentÂ’s values.  So, these people move to the burbs, and the burbsÂ’ schools start to do worse and worse and become more and more violent.  And these people have no clue as to why that is. 

 

It is the same as to govÂ’t and taxes.  People want low taxes and high employment.  However, they have no understanding that when you vote for ever more entitlements and regulatory schemes, you are increasing taxes and other costs on businesses, which in turn causes business to leave.