The only cure
It’s not possible to shrink gracefully
It’s summer, so you take your kids on a trip across the Atlantic to visit the ruins of a once great civilization. Walking through the long abandoned theaters, churches, and civic buildings, you marvel at the people who built them and wonder what it would have been like to walk among them. The majesty, history and splendor are obvious despite the decay caused by time. You smile to yourself as your kids gawk in awe, and you even secretly pocket a chunk of the rubble as a souvenir when the tour guide isn’t looking.
Yep, it was pretty clever of you to bring the whole family to Detroit for summer vacation. What will the folks back in Berlin say when they see your photos on Instagram?
Unfortunately, the little story above is from real life, not make believe. Foreign visitors travel to Detroit on popular “Ruin Tours” to visit fallen American factories and decaying public buildings.
But that’s the price for failing to grow.
On Monday, I highlighted the importance of growth for the USA. In every way, from civic pride to crime rates to fleeing residents, shrinking economies are bad for cities and bad for people. Look at the impact on my hometown and my home state.
Buffalo was the 8th largest city in America in 1900. Steel, grain mills, and a rising automotive industry attracted people from across the country and across the globe to the region. For a century, Buffalo doubled in size every 25 years. That means that when my German, Irish and Scottish immigrant ancestors came here, by the time their kids were starting their own families, there was twice as much opportunity available for them. It seemed like paradise.
Then it turned into the Rust Belt and suffered through a 50% population decline, while other American cities kept growing. Combined with inflexible rules and a tax system that wasn’t designed with Buffalo in mind, more and more businesses and jobs left. With the jobs went the people. Of my high school class, perhaps half have left the state.
In desperation, Buffalo has tried TV commercials, faulty state rescue plans, and even considered electing a mayor touting socialism, which has never led to growth or human happiness anywhere. If you could magically ask all the citizens of Buffalo, over the many decades, which was a better time to be in Buffalo, they’d answer “when it was growing.”
Same thing for New York State. As recently as World War II, New York state represented over 10% of the US population. Today, that’s shrunk to just 6%. California, Texas and Florida, which had been a fraction of New York’s size, are now larger and more successful than New York.
Slipping to fourth place has had consequences. We‘ve lost corporate headquarters, R&D jobs, and high-tech manufacturing. Old employers leave. It’s become rarer for new ones to move to the state to replace them. The state squeezes harder to get existing employers to cover the tab. That leads to New York State being ranked at the bottom for best states for business. Which means that even fewer companies will move here.
New York remains a top destination for international immigration. People from all over the planet want to move to New York. We’re the first stop on many American adventures.
But we’ve stopped drawing residents from other US states to come here. And then we’re losing more and more people every year to those other states. The immigrants from abroad come to New York, but then their children move away to find their future elsewhere in America.
As a result, New York’s top export is people. We’ve lost over 1.5 million residents to the rest of the USA since 2010. New York paid to educate, raise, and nurture these folks, and other states will get the benefit of their adult years.
New York pays, literally, for this shrinking population. Because we are becoming weaker politically, our state pays more in taxes and gets back fewer dollars from the federal government. We rank dead last among states in this money grab (Virginia and Florida rank at the top.) We’ve become an easy honeypot for other people who want to spend our money.
Shrinking is bad for economies, places, and people. It’s not possible to get smaller gracefully. Costs rise as fewer people are available to support an outdated infrastructure. Empty buildings become eyesores and invite crime. Morale shrinks as people move away to find better opportunities elsewhere, and your city or state gets a reputation for being a has-been. The local media, commonly snarky about anything civic-related, stops rolling its eyes and become boosters. Unfortunately, this is often a sign that it’s already too late.
No, shrinking hasn’t helped Buffalo or New York State become better places to live. And it won’t help the United States. If we want a better future in which people admire us for our monuments, not our rubble, growth is the only cure.
I’m rooting for you,
Marc
@cenedella
vote against democrats, most are marxist, many are worse...
Enjoyed the read. Lifetime resident of NY, about to retire, and with intent to relocate for all the reasons you mentioned.