Commentary
The exodus from big cities and blue states has become a familiar theme over the past couple of years, with COVID restrictions, rising crime, and ruinous costs prompting a significant migration of people and businesses out of urban areas and into suburbs, small towns, and booming Republican-leaning states.
Paradoxically, though, government data indicates that Americans are actually less mobile than at any time on record, including shortly after World War II, when they moved more than twice as often as today. The ongoing flight from unaffordable and dysfunctional parts of the country is real, but it’s not large enough to reverse the long-term trend of declining American mobility….