The Five States Sending the Most High Earners to Florida All Have This One Thing in Common

The Florida Chamber of Commerce might just have a message for the five states sending the most high earners to the Sunshine State, even if it’s a sure thing they’ll never listen.

It’s one thing to read dry news reports about how residents of states like New York and California have been losing residents to Ron DeSantis’ Florida. Despite cries of “KILLER!” from the Left and the media (but I repeat myself), Florida was one of the first states to fully end the idiotic COVID-19 lockdowns. Between that, no personal income tax, low regulation, and schools that are being drop-kicked back into teaching the three Rs, Florida has been attracting new residents like iron filings to a magnet.

But it’s another thing to put those numbers in dollar terms because everybody — particularly the greedy tax collectors in places like Albany and Sacramento — loves their greenbacks. So those dry news reports become a lot more exciting when we look at just how much income has made its way to the Sunshine State.

That’s exactly what the Florida Chamber of Commerce has done with its 2023 Business & Economic Midyear Report, covering the period from July 2021 to June 2022. It’s safe to say that things have changed much in the last 12 months, but we’ll have to wait until that data is collected before we know for sure.

So let’s look at what we do know.

Believe it or not, former residents of just five states make up more than half of the income that’s headed south — not for the winter, but practically forever.

They are:

New York with $9.8 billion in lost income
Illinois worth $3.9 billion
New Jersey, $3.8 billion
California, $3.5 billion
Pennsylvania, $1.9 billion

Here’s the shocker: Each one of those states is ruled completely by Democrats. Five governor’s offices and both sides of four state assemblies are dominated by Dems. There are barely any statewide GOP elected officials in any of those states. Five total, with none at all in New York or New Jersey. Democrats are free to impose their policies almost without opposition and the results are…

…well, they’re short nearly $23 billion in earning power that Democrats no longer control.

In this case, the money involved is one of those zero-sum games in which Florida’s gain is their loss.

Message: Stop electing Democrats.

It will likely fall on deaf ears, however, because there might also be a self-reinforcing death spiral going on in our Bottom Five Deep Blue States. DeSantis noted a while back that his state’s new residents were largely registering Republican. So as Florida gets redder, those Democrat-run states are getting bluer.

California is home to one in nine Americans (for now, anyway) but claims an astonishing one-third of the nation’s welfare cases. With residents fleeing with their $3.5 billion in taxable income, that situation won’t remain tenable forever.

I’d advise the last taxpayer in California to turn off the lights when they leave, but I suspect the power will already be off before then.