The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.

many people in red states think that talent and wealth are moving to red states to escape liberal politics. they are in a different dimension

So true! I have debated ad nauseum with conservatives on this very topic. Their media machine is feeding this absurdity to them and they believe it. They see it as hard evidence that conservative policies are superior to any other policies.
- It's gotten to the point I don't even talk to people who bring up the topic. You can quote any number of statistics, but they've "dun seen that californian moving in up the road, so there's the proof right there!" I guess the fact that on a ~21 house road, we've got Carolingians, Alabamians, Tex(i)ans, Michiganders, and some Arkansaws folks means that people are fleeing blue states, sure, ayup.
  *The post's language is intentional >.>
Texas might be the sole case where that’s actually happening. Most of the wealth is being concentrated in and around Austin, though.
- Yes, but they aren't moving for conservative policies or "red state". They're moving to more affordable liberal/socialist friendly enclaves. Like Austin as you pointed out. Conservatives /fascists like to imply otherwise. But they are already panicking as those areas grow in power and influence. Doing everything they can to try to neuter it. Before it changes their state politics to take their power away from them.
- And Nashville, but both are purple dots and the moment these states take a harder stance on gender policies they will relo.
  Nashville moreso because of rent costs.
- That's how a red state becomes a swing state.
- Texas has more oil than Saudi Arabia and is ideal for certain types of chemical engineering.
they think they can create their own "dimension" where everything they want to believe is magically true

A good friend of mine with a masters in Aerospace Engineering had a job offer in Texas from NASA & she turned it down because of their pro-forced birth laws.

My friend is a DevOps engineer, she fled Texas with her wife. They're both trans
I've turned down a couple prospective offers for that too. I am not going to trade my shithole state for a shittier holier state.
- Same. They offered to move me to Atlanta when my old employer moved there. No thanks.

This would be bad news for red states except the people left still get 2 senators, a disproportionate number of electoral votes, and the ability to use the internet.

And thus setting in motion the literal plot setup for Idiocracy.

Well, yeah, conservative policies are horrible. I don't see why smart people would want to live under them.

The problem is just because you're smart enough to realize this doesn't mean you have the money to move
- .
- I need somebody to help me find a blue state where I can afford a 4 bedroom 2400 sf home.
  I’m at twice the median income in my city and my house cost 280k built in 2020. Not to mention interest these days really kill the possibility of moving when I got a 2.75% interest rate and no PMI.
- or, some smart people don't care about politics. sadly most people also don't care about politics
Cheaper cost of living, and with remote work, that makes it easier to bear.
- Easier to bear, maybe, but not great. You're likely making some pretty big trade offs. Like, Wisconsin is probably cheaper but it might be way more hostile to you if you're gay or black or otherwise considered an outgroup by the right.
  And even if you're otherwise an in group, what're the music, food, and art, scenes like? If all you want to do is work and then sit at home on your couch then I guess one place is as good as another. Though this might be getting into an urban/not-urban divide more than left/right.
  And furthermore, even if your "cost of living" is lower in the extreme short term, if you're in a right wing hellscape then you have to pay one way or another for the state being gutted. There's a non-fiction book titled "A libertarian walks into a bear" that talks a lot about how there were two neighboring towns, but one had gone hard right with its policies. The other had not. Turns out the libertarian one sucked. Like, they didn't have a working fire department.
They're only horrible when you aren't rich and/or care about the safety and well-being of others.
- They're also horrible if you care about the long term. A lot of conservative policies are analogous to eating the seed corn. Yeah, you save some money now but in thirty years your infrastructure is collapsing. Or if you're really unlucky and push your luck, the state fails entirely. Most rich selfish people don't really want to die when a bridge collapses

I've lived in Florida my whole life and I'm not leaving without a fight. I'll be damned if I let my home fall to fascism. I got involved in my union. Now I'm vice president and I'm getting involved in the UAW CAP and I'll be lobbying the government for labor rights. My mission is to punch Desantis in the dong. Momma ain't raise no quitter.

"Florida man punches DeSantis in the dong" is a headline that would be funny.
- This is one of the least insane things Florida Man would do
I just want to say that we need more people like you. I get that being this active is not for everyone, but damn, we need it right now. And I'm including myself in that statement.
- I'm not really that kind of person either. I'm a real hermit. But it's gotta be done and I figure I can sit around and hope for someone to fight for me or do it myself. The biggest thing we need is more locals in Florida though. Strength in numbers doesn't work well without the numbers and we need people to start organizing their workplaces before meaningful change will occur.
Fuckin a friendo! Give them hell!
- It took me way too long to realize that the a in your comment should be capitalised and comma'd.

I know the red/blue model is useful in some cases but I live in a red state (Louisiana) in one of the most blue cities in America (New Orleans). Biden won like 40% of the statewide vote and we have a two-term Democratic governor (about to leave office but still). And that’s with a state Democratic Party that is a constant mess, never has resources, gets zero national investment or attention, and sometimes doesn’t even field candidates.

National politics isn’t everything. Sure, Biden shouldn’t spend much time or money here but Democrats have no excuse not to have an aggressive 50 state operation. Just having a credible candidate means a scandal can flip a Congressional seat but attorney generals and secretaries of state matter too. There’s even value in losing an election even if your candidate is just on the local news calling out his opponent.

My state (GA) elected two Democratic Senators and folks still label it "red."
- Plenty of talk about Georgia being purple though too.
- You can blame Marge for that.
I wonder if the whole red state/blue state discourse would disappear if we just got rid of the fucking Electoral College...
- Gerrymandering is a much bigger problem
- Throw in ranked choice voting while we're at it
And then you have blue states, like NY where I live. I live in a blue section within the state, but I could travel a half hour away and end up in an area so red that they fly Trump flags, Confederate flags, and vote for Elise Stefanik. (I get TV commercials for her despite not being in her area.) That area might as well be the deep south despite being in Blue NY.
Even states people label consistently "red", also majority of the time have Democrat governors like Kentucky.

I'm a tech worker who's planning to move from one of those states international oversight groups consider "no longer a democracy" to a blue state.

I remember a bunch of Americans telling me that America isn't a democracy, and shouldn't score high on those indexes that rank countries... because the USA is actually a republic.
So of course, there's no sense in comparing the US to other countries unless they're also republics. Or if we're talking about economies.
- it is a Liberal Democratic Republic, next time they ask.. say it slowly for them..
- There are federal elections (of a sort) so the country as a whole can be gauged on that. And on that front... not looking so hot, either, but it's not as bad as certain individual states.

I feel like this is part of a Republican long game - make their states so unpalatable to progressives that they move out, thus ensuring that the US Senate and House are never again under Democratic control. It's like a for of self-imposed gerrymandering for Democrats, packing themselves into the few states with liberal legislaturea and policies.

Of course, those blue states will continue to subsidize the red states through tax dollars and federal programs, but that's another issue entirely.

That’s not the end game. Conservatives will never be satisfied with progressives existing in their country, even if in a different state.
No, the goal secession. Or worse.
- Yeah I'm not convinced at all that they're ok with us existing in other states. They want us completely and utterly nullified as having any political say in this country. They want us off school boards, out of Congress, out of the White House, off the city council, not moving to their towns, not vacationing in their regions, not watching their sports teams. They want us silent, imprisoned, deported, or dead.
The house part doesn't work though. Population determines representation, so if lots of people leave, the red states get less votes in the house. Granted, we will have to wait for the next census, which should be really interesting to read about.
- I'd say, based on the political atmosphere and outlook of the next 7-8 years, that the next census is too far off to depend on. Imagine if it's unbearable enough to send a significant portion of people out of any swing states, and that could clinch 2028. I doubt the insanity will have lessened in time for project2029...

Sorry, add here and super lazy. I started reading the piece and within a few paragraphs I realized I was just reading a story about some couple I don't really give two shits about. Then I quickly scrolled up and down in the article and saw how long it was.

So can anyone tell me when it gets to the actual evidence that there is a brain drain? Make no mistake about it, my wife and I (my wife highly trained and me a software engineer) left a red state with our family partially, even only slightly so, because of state policies. So its not surprise it happens.

I'm a software engineer too. I was born in the deep south where even my grandmother disowned me because I told her people were going to die on January 6th because of trump, she said I was a liar and hung up and never answered my calls again. I moved to a purple state to balance out the MAGA extremists. The whole southeast is full of some of the least educated people in America, and the vast majority are red.
- They're filled with uneducated people because they're red states.
It started badly with that couple being the focus in a story-like section. Too long only to shift to discuss different reasons and examples of people leaving other states for various reasons. About 2/3 of the way through they finally get into demographics of college educated people, their economic benefits and new data on rates of leaving red states for blue states.
Eventually it was very good at describing the overall situation happening. But man, they didn't need to write so much about their personal lives. Especially at the beginning.
- Recipe for raw apples:
  When I was a little child, my mother and I used to go to the beach to laugh at the seagulls. We'd pick up random shells and yell "hey stupid, here's food! Harharhar!" One day I was riding a donkey and fell on my ass, not sure if it was the donkey or my actual ass I don't remember. There were so many memories of apples and asses in my past that I love to walk down the isles of my local supermarket and dream of the revolution where apples and pineapples will rise together, put their differences apart, and eat the rich.
  Recipe: 1 raw apple. Eat.
- It's the classic "human interest" hook that probably works with most people. I didn't mind it, but yeah, it was long. The old a-spoonful-of-anecdote-helps-the-statistic-go-down method, but very poorly measured.

It's intentional. Easier to commit atrocities when there's nobody intelligent around.

I don't allow them to be that intelligent. I think it's more of a happy coincidence. They are more "fall in line or you don't belong here." If they lose you in the mix, it's your fault for not seeing the grander scheme.
I seriously don't think they are smart enough to manipulate on this scale. They are just puppets of fear and keep squawking .

The second I get a stable job, it's off to Colorado. While it's still blue.

Colorado has moved more blue over the last couple decades. Please ignore Boebert. All of us in the developed parts of the state do.
- I couldn't agree more. She's an outlier, and we just pat her on the head and say "That's nice, dear, now go vape in a theater somewhere."
We will only get bluer with more people moving from places like CA and Chicago. Come on over, there's plenty of activities :)

It's been going on for a while now ...

This was in fact the goal. Convincing morons to vote against their own best interest is way easier than trying to convince people who are actually capable of reasoning. Gotta pump those GOP voter rolls somehow after all, and gerrymandering and voter suppression only gets you so far.
Until Roe was overturned, Austin was getting a huge influx of people from the coasts for tech jobs
- The tickle began to slow when real estate prices started skyrocketing.
- And to think, I only moved down here for family.
- Is your name an intentional Discworld reference?

Oh, no!

Anyway.

This attitude pisses me off for a number of reasons.
Not everyone can afford to move out of these states as they become steadily shittier. Smart people leaving further entrenches the conservative majority in those states, which makes it harder to flip states. It makes it easier for Republicans to control the Senate, and harder for Democrats to accomplish anything (not that they ever fucking want to). And when Republicans put policies in place that fuck over the people who can't leave, Democrats on the national level consider it to be a Red State Problem that they don't have to worry about doing anything about, because all the people who can't leave evidently deserve it for being outnumbered and not having enough money to move.
Thing is, Democrats' lack of solidarity is gonna come back to bite them in the ass. When their negligence has caused a permanent Republican majority in the Senate, those Red State Problems they didn't give a shit about are gonna be implemented at the national level. They're not gonna stay Red State Problems.
- Not that it makes it any better, but a lot of those people who can't afford to move also can't afford to vote (time off work, travel to a polling station, time to actually look into what's going on)
- Control of states like Texas and Florida are permanently lost to conservatives. As long as conservative Governors have complete control over their Secretaries of State, they cannot lose their "elections". Remember, every conservative accusation is a confession.
- ... Democrats on the national level consider it to be a Red State Problem that they don’t have to worry about doing anything about, because all the people who can’t leave evidently deserve it for being outnumbered and not having enough money to move.
  Conservative policies don't only hurt progressives; they hurt everybody. If state conservatives are doing things which hurt everybody, they're that much closer to being voted out.
republican policies create more republicans and now that they're a majority (per the article) a majority of the next generation will be republican.

Isn't that why they're red?

- You’re right about everything except the timeline. Radical fascist radio has been a thing since at least the 1930s.