Posted on 05/14/2006 3:53:31 AM PDT by Jim Noble
A majority of people who moved out of Massachusetts last year report they are very satisfied with life in their new state and would not move back, a Boston Globe poll has found.
Seventy-three percent of those surveyed said they live in a home that is bigger than their home in Massachusetts was. Fifty-four percent said their standard of living is higher now.
The top reason people gave for leaving Massachusetts was a better job, followed by the cost of housing, family ties, and the weather. In a separate set of questions, 50 percent of those surveyed said the cost of housing was a ''major factor," and a better job was cited as a ''major factor" by 39 percent...
The survey comes as candidates for governor and policy makers are discussing the state's stagnant population, and identifies some of the aspects where Massachusetts faces a competitive disadvantage with other states.
''It points out that people are not being dragged away from Massachusetts kicking and screaming...I see so many people who move from Massachusetts and say they will never move back."
...The exodus from Massachusetts has been particularly acute in recent years. Between 2000 and 2004, Massachusetts lost residents at a greater rate than any other state except New York, according to Census Bureau estimates that were released last month. The exodus from Massachusetts averaged 42,402 people per year, according to the Census data.
...A majority -- 69 percent -- said they found Bay State residents either ''much less courteous" or ''somewhat less courteous" than people in their new state.
Some allegiances persisted, the results showed. Only 5 percent of those polled said they were now cheering for a different sports team.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Don't you dare! :)
But I'll bet many of the the folks who are leaving the state are don't make that much, or if they do can't afford to spend it. Mr. Mew's been offered a couple of jobs in MA. He turned them both down because our standard of living would have gone in the dumper since they salaries he was offered wouldn't come close to offstting the increase in the cost of living. And he had no desire to do what some of his friends were doing which was spending 3 or 4 hours a day commuting from VT or NH.
It's a beautiful state so I can understand why folks like living there, but voters are shooting themselves in the feet by continuing to elect pols who are driving people out.
Massachusetts is a great state with tremendous beauty and many wonderful people. My problem is with Mass politics and it's social mindset. Other than that it is a fantastic place, steeped in American history.
Every state in the Union has good points and bad points. I have lived and worked in many of them and have yet to find one that is perfect.
Naw, those illegal aliens are just "undocumented citizens" as one radio infobabe called them.
The survey comes as candidates for governor and policy makers are discussing the state's stagnant population, and identifies some of the aspects where Massachusetts faces a competitive disadvantage with other states. ''It points out that people are not being dragged away from Massachusetts kicking and screaming...I see so many people who move from Massachusetts and say they will never move back."
The politicians will naturally be shocked by these findings and their response will be to immediately raise all taxes 10% to offset this lose of revenue.
This of course will compel more people to flee Mass and the pols will again respond by raising taxes some more to offset this additional lose of revenue.
Which again will make more people flee Mass and the pols will raise taxes, etc, etc ....
There'll be a Texan here shortly to dispute your assumption.
No way.
They keep crawling out of the woodwork.
I just hope they're not moving to Tennessee. Northeastern Liberals have proven they know how to ruin a state (over and over again).....
I lived the entire 90s in Charlestown, too, Strider, and my wife and I loved it. We're out in the burbs now because of kids. But I must say, now that I'm 58 and ailing, the weather gets me down something fierce. (For those of you elsewhere, it is now about 49 degrees and raining cats and dogs in the Boston area, and has been doing so for a week.) Like a lot of Americans, I have no real "home." Where I was raised (South Dakota, Minnesota), all the family is gone elsewhere or died out. I spent longer in L.A. (18 years) than anywhere else, but wouldn't go back. Nowadays, I cruise the net and evaluate housing stock and prices in warmer places. Springfield, MO, and Chapel Hill are both very appealing.
12% blamed the state's "liberal politics."
Not everyone wants to live in a metro area where a night out means driving 10 miles to an Applebee's in heavy traffic.
(This native Texan is back home in God's Country -- and is still rejoicing over successful escape from 20-year "exile" in the "Commonpoverty of Taxachusetts" !!)
Indeed, it's a great place to live if you had a foot in the housing market before the big run-up in prices or if you make a lot of money. For young people, though, there's no hope of owning a home without a massive readjustment of the housing market. It's sad and the only way out is for the towns to ease up on their snob zoning. Certainly the cities (Boston, Cambridge, Somerville) are putting up tons of new condos but the prices are so far pretty expensive. I don't think it'll last.
Not true. They keep spawning. Reference: Patches. Lil' Joe the Whiner.
"The nationwide survey, commissioned by the Globe and administered over the phone, interviewed 524 people between April 28 and May 4. The respondents, who moved out of Massachusetts in 2005, were randomly selected from a database compiled from change-of-address forms for utilities and telephone service and public records. The questions covered a range of topics, from people's perceptions of their new local public schools to the courteousness of their neighbors."
Now what was the Boston Globe's position again on privacy, telephone data bases, and data mining?
Next year, the cost of heating your home will be a "major factor". Many of the rapidly-disappearing middle class in New England now have monthly heating bills. Nothing like paying a $200 heating bill in July and August.
I went to the Boston in the spring. Trudged through miserable freezing rain.
I went to Boston in the summer. Temperature hovered around 100 degrees, hotter than any summer day I'd ever experienced in the South. Far more humid too.
I went to the Boston in the fall. Trudged through miserable freezing rain.
I went to Boston in the winter. Got trapped by a Nor'easter.
Awful traffic too, even by city standards. Almost as bad as when I drove through NYC on July 3rd, and this was on a -daily- basis, not holiday traffic.
End of story.
Just like moooslimbs.
No kidding. I lived in east Tennessee for 5 years, and am returning after two wretched years with 'in-laws' back in New Hampshire. I'm up to here with liberals and their socialist ideologies...
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