Florida vs. California

June 17, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I have done eight columns comparing Texas and California and five columns comparing Florida and New York.

But maybe it is time to compare Florida and California?

If I do, there’s no comparison, at least based on how people vote with their feet. Even though California has the nation’s best climate and geography, the state’s politicians have made the state economically unattractive and people are leaving.

Indeed, the no-longer-Golden State leads the nation in out-migration.

And it probably will not surprise you to learn that Florida leads the nation in in-migration.

Why are people leaving California and why are people moving to Florida?

• Perhaps because Florida ranks as America’s economically freest state while California is #49.
• Perhaps because Florida ranks in the top 5 and California ranks in the bottom 5 for tax policy.
• Perhaps because Florida ranks very high (#2) and California ranks very low (#48) for overall freedom.
• Perhaps because Florida has no state income tax while California has the nation’s highest income tax rate.
• Perhaps because Florida ranks #1 for school choice while California languishes in the middle of the pack.

Incidentally, I’m comparing Florida and California because that may be where 2024 (or even 2028) politics is taking us.

The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis is officially running for president and the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is unofficially running.

And because they see each other as rivals, there’s some sniping about which state has a better track record. The Wall Street Journal has opined on their disagreements.

Why not a public face-off between these two combative, young, upwardly mobile Governors? This could be the substantive argument the country needs, pitting Florida’s red-state model against California’s blue-state approach. Instead of catcalls in the media, they could make a case to the public, with evidence and data, for the country to follow their lead. Mr. DeSantis, as an announced 2024 candidate, has more to lose, but in our eyes his state has the better story, and if the Governor is confident about it, he should take the challenge. A good showing by Mr. Newsom could even nudge him into a primary against Mr. Biden. Florida vs. California is what the electorate deserves in 2024, and if it isn’t an official presidential debate, an extracurricular one beats nothing.

For what it’s worth, I hope the two of them do a public debate. We’d presumably have some honest discussion about whether government should be bigger or smaller.

And both DeSantis and Newsom could come out winners in the sense that the public would favorably compare them to the elderly frontrunners for the Republican and Democratic nominations in 2024.

But I’m not a political pundit, so that’s just a guess.

I’ll close with another look at migration data. Only this time we’ll focus on businesses rather than people. Here’s a chart from a recent Wall Street Journal column.

The good news for Newsom, at least relatively speaking, is that New York did even worse than California.

P.S. California leads Florida in per-capita income, though that’s offset by big differences in the cost of living.

P.P.S. And you can see here and here that California leads in generating political satire.