Why Americans have stopped moving

New York Post ^ | April 15, 2017 | Kyle Smith

[TBP]

Americans are stuck. Locked into our jobs, rooted where we live, frozen at our income levels. More than at any previous point in our history, we’ve stopped moving — whether moving up the income ladder or packing up a truck and finding another home. We’ve grown ossified, rigid.

The flip side is that we’re stable. If we weren’t so content, we’d be more willing to gamble, to shake things up, to start a new firm or join one. Maybe we’re fine where we are. But maybe this period of stasis cannot last. Maybe it even portends a period of massive disruption.

In “The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream,” economist Tyler Cowen presents an X-ray of societal sclerosis. This isn’t merely another exercise in nostalgia, a sentimental yearning for a bygone era (when, for instance, crime and pollution were higher, people were highly likely to marry someone who lived within five blocks and you would buy an album containing 10 lousy songs because you liked one track). Something has changed in the American character and in the American economy, and the two seem to be reinforcing each other.

For instance, parts of the country (New York City, Silicon Valley, Texas) are doing extremely well, yet able-bodied adults sit idle in other areas. Why don’t the unemployed, and the large numbers who have dropped out of the labor force, move to the boom towns? Wouldn’t it be better to drive an Uber in Brooklyn than to get by on welfare in West Virginia?

[Tax-chick]

I’m thinking it has to do with taxes: people sell a house Up North or in California, and they have to roll over the capital gain into a new primary residence. Well, a new primary residence here in Boring costs 50% - 70% less, so they end up with a huge place.

[kearnyirish2]

Good point; that makes sense.

[foreverfree]

bump