Statewide Catastrophe Is Coming
NJ's net domestic outmigration isn't that old. During the great era of suburbanization our population was bolstered in large part by relocations from Pennsylvania and New York.
For instance, during the 1950s our population increased by 1.2 million (25%). During the 1960s NJ's population increased by 1.1 million (18%). I know that was the era of the Baby Boom, but not all of that could have come from births and international immigration, a lot of it was PA and NYS migration. When I compare NJ's population growth to population growth in PA and NYS, ours is much larger, presumably due to those states losing people to us.
I don't know when our net domestic migration turned negative, but I don't think anyone talked about domestic net migration in the 1990s, even though our population growth was slower by then.
If New Jersey's economy were still growing rapidly despite a flat-lining population then I wouldn't worry and might even welcome ZPG because we are already the country's most densely populated state. However, in the case of NJ, the stagnant population growth and stagnant economy match each other quite well.
As New Jersey's economy barely grows, the state's revenues barely grow as well. NJ's state revenue increases by $1 billion a year, but about half of that is inflation, so the state doesn't have much more to work with and all new money goes into pensions and health care anyway. Hence, virtually all state services are eroding in real, inflation-adjusted terms and our quality-of-life deteriorates.
Outmigration is both a symptom and a cause of our myriad problems. It's a symptom of slow job growth and high costs, but outmigration itself hurts our economy because retirees take a lot of spending power with them and young people take a lot of energy that could have been poured into entrepreneurship here (plus some spending power)
Since NJ is the country's top spending state for K-12 ($20,000 per student), we are losing people we invested quite a large amount of money in all for the benefit of California, New York, Florida, Texas, North Carolina etc.
ml1 said:
we know it's expensive to live here. so that's not news.
I would think the onus is on you to show why outmigration is the problem you think it is. I may be mistaken, but I believe NJ natives have been moving out of the state and being replaced by immigrants for decades. So why is it now suddenly a problem?
you still aren't producing any data that proves it's bad for the state that immigrants are replacing retirees and other natives who leave. The state's population is still growing, although slowly. I get what you're saying about it being easier to grow out of debt with population increases, but this trend is at least 30 years in the making and there's no reason to believe we can substantially grow our population. NJ is already densely populated, and significant population growth will only put more stress on our infrastructure. Commuting stress, traffic and crowding is probably contributing to the outmigration already. Add to that the desire for many people to retire to warmer climates, and it's a trend that isn't likely to have an easy solution.
The people who point to NJ outmigration usually have one goal in mind -- tax cuts. Even if we stem the outmigration, tax cutting has never been shown to reduce government debt. So to me, the outmigration "crisis" often looks to me as a solution (tax cuts) in search of a problem (in this case, outmigration).
Anyway, here's another POV on NJ's population trend and some ideas for reversing the trend somewhat:
http://www.nj.com/opinion/inde...
btw, I found this passage interesting. Not all people leaving NJ are doing so to avoid taxes:
Six in 10 New Jerseyans did move to places that have lower state-local tax burdens (measured by the Tax Foundation as the total amount residents pay in state and local taxes) than the country's average 9.9 percent. But four in 10 moved to states with higher-than-average tax burdens, including New York, California, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Outmigration from New Jersey to lower-tax states tended to be to warmer climates (Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia). New Hampshire has the seventh lowest tax burden in the country at 7.9 percent, but didn't even break into the top 20 states where New Jerseyans relocated. (Maybe New Hampshire's average January temperature of 20.6 degrees had something to do with that.)
National census data show that people move for a variety of reasons and that job-related and family-related issues were the cause for nearly half of all moves from 2014 to 2015.
Relief is on the way.
https://www.commentarymagazine...
From the article:
In Lakewood, New Jersey, for example, 4,000 children were born last year into a Haredi population of perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 families.
LOST said:
Relief is on the way.
https://www.commentarymagazine...
From the article:
In Lakewood, New Jersey, for example, 4,000 children were born last year into a Haredi population of perhaps 10,000 to 12,000 families.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
About 4% of NJ's babies are born in Lakewood.
I admit I've obscured my real point about relative economic stagnation by talking so much about population stagnation. NJ's flat-population growth is newsworthy in its own right as a demographic trend story, but my real anxiety is the economic trend story that it correlates with.
I cannot (and should not) address every point you make, but I would like to critique the article you linked to.
I disagree with the following statement, both for its relevance and the methodology the Tax Foundation uses for tax burden:
"But four in 10 moved to states with higher-than-average tax burdens, including New York, California, Massachusetts, and Maryland."
NJ is ranked #3 in taxes, with SALT taxes at 12.3% of income. California is at 11%, Maryland is only at 10.9%, Massachusetts is only at 10.3% of income.
Although CA, MD, and MA are sixth, seventh, and twelfth, respectively, in tax burden and they are above the national average, they still have taxes significantly lower than New Jersey.
But I think the Tax Foundation's survey is not methodologically applicable here:
1. because it looks at tax revenue, divides by total income, and then calculates tax burden, even though states derive much revenue from sources other than ordinary residential income.
For instance, Alaska is ranked as having the country's 7th worst taxes, but Alaska has no income tax, has no sales tax, and low property taxes, so how can anyone say it has the country's worst tax burden on regular people?
Yes, Alaska's revenue is high in terms of its GDP, but that's because of taxes on oil companies.
Likewise for New York State, New York's revenue is high because it can tax Wall Street. Ordinary New Yorkers aren't paying 12.7% of their income in taxes.
2. from the perspective of retirement costs and business operating costs, a tax _rate_ is less relevant than total costs.
Retired people have the same fixed income no matter where they live. Social Security and their investment income follow them wherever they go. So for tax-sensitive retired people the most important tax is the property tax and here NJ's average tax burden ($8600 per household) is by far the country's worst.
Also, the "Weather Excuse" is highly incomplete.
New Jersey has the country's worst domestic outmigration, but we do not have the worst winters. Not by a longshot.
Why is it that fewer retired New Jerseyans stay in NJ than in even colder states? I think taxes, along with non-tax cost-of-living expenses, are a major reason.
New Hampshire, which the author highlights as a non-destination of New Jerseyans, still has a positive inmigration of 3.3 per 1,000.
If you look at the states that have the worst outmigration, are a few are energy-producing states that are going through a contractions, but most are high-tax states, like Illinois, NYS, CT, and NJ.
ml1 said:
you still aren't producing any data that proves it's bad for the state that immigrants are replacing retirees and other natives who leave. The state's population is still growing, although slowly. I get what you're saying about it being easier to grow out of debt with population increases, but this trend is at least 30 years in the making and there's no reason to believe we can substantially grow our population. NJ is already densely populated, and significant population growth will only put more stress on our infrastructure. Commuting stress, traffic and crowding is probably contributing to the outmigration already. Add to that the desire for many people to retire to warmer climates, and it's a trend that isn't likely to have an easy solution.
The people who point to NJ outmigration usually have one goal in mind -- tax cuts. Even if we stem the outmigration, tax cutting has never been shown to reduce government debt. So to me, the outmigration "crisis" often looks to me as a solution (tax cuts) in search of a problem (in this case, outmigration).
Anyway, here's another POV on NJ's population trend and some ideas for reversing the trend somewhat:
http://www.nj.com/opinion/inde...
btw, I found this passage interesting. Not all people leaving NJ are doing so to avoid taxes:
Six in 10 New Jerseyans did move to places that have lower state-local tax burdens (measured by the Tax Foundation as the total amount residents pay in state and local taxes) than the country's average 9.9 percent. But four in 10 moved to states with higher-than-average tax burdens, including New York, California, Massachusetts, and Maryland. Outmigration from New Jersey to lower-tax states tended to be to warmer climates (Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia). New Hampshire has the seventh lowest tax burden in the country at 7.9 percent, but didn't even break into the top 20 states where New Jerseyans relocated. (Maybe New Hampshire's average January temperature of 20.6 degrees had something to do with that.)
National census data show that people move for a variety of reasons and that job-related and family-related issues were the cause for nearly half of all moves from 2014 to 2015.
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Heh. Nothing a Pollyanna hasn't seen before.