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?

[SaxxonWoods]

We been becoming more like Europe by design and this is one of the results.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Most of my relatives in southern Illinois live in the same one or two counties our ancestors moved to almost 200 years ago. They have raised good families. They have rolled with the economic punches. They are all reasonably content. There is something to be said about being rooted in a place. There are times I wish I had folower their example.

[Tax-chick]

A man by himself can live in a small hotel room, split the expense with another man and send most of his paycheck home.

The standard immigrant pattern, if you substitute "tenement room" for "hotel room."

Why did geographic mobility suddenly become a +1 good? Some people move because it's their personality. We all know "movers." Some people move because the current location is intolerable. Some people die in place.

It seems as if someone want human beings and their lives to be 100% interchangeable, as called upon by the higher (economic) power.

[SkyPilot]

One reason people don’t move where the jobs are is because of real-estate prices — which in turn are kept at high levels by regulatory restrictions and NIMBY-ism. In New York City in the 1950s a typical apartment rented for $60 a month, or $530 today if you adjust for inflation. Two researchers found that if you reduced regulations for building new homes in places like New York and San Francisco to the median level, the resulting expanded workforce would increase US GDP by $1.7 trillion. That won’t happen, though: More homes would diminish the property values of existing homeowners.

Very true.

A friend of mine told me that he went for a job interview in Sacramento California.

He is a great guy, lovely wife inside and out (could have been a supermodel, turned down numerous modeling offers), and three small children.

He retuned from his cross country interview dejected. He met with a real estate agent, and discovered that what they were offering him in salary would buy him a very lousy home in that market.

Another thing that really worries me about our economy is the incredibly over inflated stock market.

Market growth these past few years was devoid of any economic reality. It was all ZIRP, QE, and casino gambling.

If it bursts, it will crash hard. There is no soft landing anymore.

[SkyPilot]

New Yorkers especially are flooding Baltimore

Baltimore?

Really?

[SkyPilot]

New Yorkers especially are flooding Baltimore

Baltimore?

Really?

[dragnet2]

Oh sure, everyone move to Silicon Valley, where even the lousy smallest homes costs $750,000, in a state that has the highest taxes and cost of living...Right.

[Clutch Martin]

Back in the day... Every time I relocated to a new job the hiring company paid for the move.

Are companies still paying for moves? Not so much? Hiring from the local talent pool?

[Vision]

Yes. I can’t drive 5 minutes without seeing a NY plate. Parked in suburbs, at gyms, at supermarkets.

[relictele]

A similar article was written in the last six months by another writer in another publication.

Although the premise is somewhat accurate and therefore tempting, many Americans ARE moving. To be precise, they are fleeing high tax, high regulation states as well as states that appear to be relatively sane but that have insane liabilities to all those useless bureaucrats and teachers they employed in excessive numbers over the decades. They retired on or near full salary and enjoy cost of living adjustments. Ohio is a perfect example as its college grads depart and blanket the Southeast.

Are people moving out of choice? Not really. Are they moving out of necessity? Absolutely.

[sheana]

Welfare is easier. No one is going hungry or doing without medical care so why move? It’s that simple.
During the dust bowl my grandparents and their kids were going hungry. They packed up and moved from Arkansas to California. You don’t have to do that anymore.

[crusher2013]

With a 5 to 10K deductible.

For most people healthcare is a huge chunk of their family budget. If someone on your family is sick and needs regular care it is too big a risk.

[Avalon Memories]

So in a nutshell, many Americans are complacent and it’s Trump’s fault.

[SkyPilot]

Thanks.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The standard immigrant pattern, if you substitute "tenement room" for "hotel room."

Yes.

Men used to come from all over Europe and worked in the US for a few years to save up to buy a small farm back home.

Some finally brought their families over and became Americans, the majority went back and bought their farm.

We have done a great deal of moving but now you would need blasting powder to get us out. Of course, half of us are retired so there is that.

[Fitzy_888]

Look at Texas migration rates...
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/census/2010-census-state-migration-statistics.html

[Windflier]

The Dallas - Ft Worth real estate market is on fire. People are swarming in here from all over the country.

Four bedroom house across the alley from me was bought sight-unseen by a flipper six months ago for $166,000. It just went on the market for $267,000 - and there's been a steady parade of interested buyers for the last four days. I predict it will sell before the end of next week.

I paid $135K for my house just three years ago.

[Tax-chick]

The aging of the population is definitely an issue. And there are other issues.

For me, the useful for point is that the confluence of demographics and economics is very complex. You have a theory? FReep, it’s probably wrong.

[Windflier]

I never spent more than one semester in any school. The idea of being in one place for a whole year was beyond my comprehension.

I was born an Army brat in the early fifties, and grew up just like that. It made me want to settle down and sink roots more than anything else in this world.

Sadly, though, my life took me in directions that caused me to average about three years per relocation. I'm not far off from realizing my dream of living like you do. Another couple of years in the current house, and we'll be able to buy a place like yours, far out of town.

[Windflier]

I feel for you, Yaelle. I’m a 63 year old born and raised Californian, but by 2005, I’d had enough. I took a huge risk and moved the family and our little business to Texas, where we hardly knew a soul.

The first few years of re-establishing our lives here were rough, but having come through it, I’d do it all again without hesitation. Our life here is that much better than it was in Cali. By miles.