It is no secret that liberal states like California and New York are growing much slower than conservative ones like Texas and Florida. California’s

Sewer Liberalism - Zachariah Schwab

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2024-11-15 03:30:10

It is no secret that liberal states like California and New York are growing much slower than conservative ones like Texas and Florida. California’s population grew from 34.0 million in 2000 to 39.0 in 2023 (39.5 in 2020 if you only trust censuses). Texas by contrast has grown from 20.9 to 30.5 million (29.2 in 2020) in 2023. That means every year California was growing by 0.60% each year compared to 1.65% in Texas. The next biggest states, New York and Florida have grown 0.12% and 1.51% annualized respectively.

This presents a fairly good argument for conservatives: if liberalism is so good why doesn’t anyone vote with their feet? With New York, Illinois and Massachusetts a weather based argument is possible but California’s climate is famously desireable. Thus the liberal must acknowledge that they have bad housing policies or leave the challenge unanswered. Either is obviously suboptimal, it would be a lot easier if liberal states were growing just as fast if not faster.

Matt Yglesias made the point that “[i]t would not be that hard to turn California, New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland into the fastest-growing states in America and if that was the situation I think perceptions of Democrats would meaningfully change”. People can see what governance looks like when liberals are in charge of a polity, and it’s not obviously better. This essay will thus give suggestions for policies that are good on the merits and achievable in subnational governments in order to generate broad prosperity and make liberalism more appealing to the american electorate. What I will not do is give advice to people trying to win moderate electorates, what generates good outcomes is not always the same as what is advantageous to run on.

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