United Van Lines, LLC has released its annual migration study on where it takes its clients to and from among the 48 contiguous states. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has tested their data against actual census data going back to 1977 and found the two to be very highly correlated. This makes UVL data something of a leading migration indicator. According to UVL, a staggering 67.8 percent of its Michigan client traffic was outbound in 2007. That rate is an all-time record high, eclipsing the previous 1981 record of 66.9 percent during a year the Great Lake State suffered from an unemployment rate of 12.5 percent. Last month the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Michigan lost 30,500 citizens from July 2006 to July 2007. For more information on Michigan's migration, read "Michigan's Diaspora: The Revealed Preference for Leaving."
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4 comments:
High taxes and an endless number of oppressive, overbearing bureaucrat tyrants infesting state government... who in their right mind would stay under these circumstances?
Not to mention every time some slug of a person dares to make a living with good benefits in this state the corporate pawns cry "foul!" and accuse the good workers of being fat and overpaid.
You're right. Who would want to live here?
Wow, the second poster sure has an ax to grind, doesn't he?
I think his point about "good benefits" is referring to the continued tussle over teacher health insurance, delivered through MESSA, the affiliate of the MEA teachers union. Whenever reformers like the Mackinac Center advocate reforming MESSA, people like the second poster cry foul, about "taking away" their benefits.
Let's be crystal clear about this: Nobody wants to take away teachers health insurance. We want to reform how those benefits are delivered: through COMPETITIVE BIDDING so the taxpayers get the best rate. Time and again, competitive bidding has shown that schools can get the same level of health insurance, at a lower cost, than that delivered through MESSA.
So what we want to reform is the corrupt bargain between schools and MESSA, which siphons off a large percentage of health insurance premiums directly into the coffers of the teachers union. This is not right, it is corrupt, and needs to be fixed.
--Ray Wilson
Kalamazoo Co. Taxpayers Assoc.
http://www.kaltax.org
If Michigan doesn't get it's economic act together soon, we are headed for a very bleak future.
Michigan's future depends on entrepreneurs, not politicians. We have a do-nothing legislature hopelessly divided by ideology and ignorance.
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