Freer Carolinas Means More Carolinians

By John Hood

RALEIGH — Progressives are frustrated by North Carolina’s just-enacted state budget, hostile to recent deregulatory initiatives and tax cuts, and outraged at recent welfare reforms and school-choice expansions. They think our state is careening dangerously in the wrong direction. If their preferred candidates win state and local offices in November, they hope to reverse course.

I anticipate the Left will win quite a few electoral victories this fall — but not because North Carolinians are unhappy with how their state is governed. The party of incumbent presidents tend to take it on the chin in midterms, especially during a second term. And the Trump administration has turned off many independents and GOP-leaning voters with both unwise policies and indefensible conduct.

Progressives believe their opposition to North Carolina’s conservative turn since 2010 has failed because they haven’t raised enough money, spoken the right magic words, or been robbed of power by unfair gerrymandering. They are mistaken. Republicans won the General Assembly and a spate of other races in 2010 despite being outspent, employing standard conservative rhetoric, and running in unfavorably drawn districts. Democrats face barriers, sure, but hardly insurmountable ones.

The core problem with the progressive argument against conservative governance is that, to be blunt, most people prefer conservative governance most of the time.

They believe government exists to deliver core public services at a reasonable cost and should otherwise leave them alone. They put more stock in unity, equality, and individual excellence than separatism, racial preferences, and collective guilt. They think crime is caused by criminals, not impersonal social forces, so its reduction is best accomplished by deterring or incarcerating criminals, not expanding welfare or “defunding the police.” They believe parents, not bureaucrats, should decide where and how children will be educated and that customers, not bureaucrats, should decide where and how they will secure food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and the other necessities of life.

Years of careful surveys by my Carolina Journal colleagues and other pollsters confirm these preferences. But I admit that survey questions can be artfully worded to produce a range of responses, some seemingly contradictory. So, let’s consider another signal: mobility patterns.

The United States of America is a common market with no internal borders. If you want to leave your current home to explore opportunities in another community or state, you are free to do so. Since 1994, when conservatives won unprecedented victories in state and local races in North Carolina and across the country, “red” and “blue” states have increasingly diverged in their policy choices on taxes, spending, regulation, education, healthcare, transportation, and other key issues.

Presented with such alternatives, Americans could have gravitated toward states with bigger governments offering more-generous public assistance and advancing left-wing values. But they didn’t. Conservatively governed places such as Texas, Florida, and the Carolinas have tended to attract new residents. Progressively governed places have tended to repel them.

Jack Salmon, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, has just documented these flows in a new policy brief. From 2018 to 2023, South Carolina ranked second and North Carolina ninth on a measure called the in-migration rate (new residents divided by population). You’ll find the likes of California, New York, and Illinois at the bottom of the list.

Policy variables are, of course, hardly the only ones that influence where people move, form families, or start new businesses. After adjusting for climate and other factors, Salmon found strong statistical relationships between in-migration on the one hand and tax burdens, size of government, and other measures of economic freedom on the other.

The results suggest that “attracting and retaining residents depends less on geographic advantages than on policy choices,” Salmon concluded. “States that prioritize competitive tax structures and allow housing supply to respond to demand are more likely to experience sustained population growth.”

I know these migration patterns probably won’t convince many progressives to abandon their longtime beliefs about taxes, regulation, school choice, and other issues. Still, hope springs eternal.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).