This state needs an enema.
Now more than ever.
The Commonwealth has been circling the drain for a good long while now, but evidence of the ongoing catastrophe just keeps piling up.
The latest news comes from the Internal Revenue Service’s annual data on the migration – flight might be a better term – of taxpayers out of failed Democrat-run states.
The statistics also include the amount of income lost (and gained) by each of the 50 states.
Massachusetts, which ranks 16th in population, comes in at a glittering number five in lost income in 2022 — $3.9 billion vanished from the Bay State, according to the feds’ own numbers.
The only places that had higher rates of working-class flight were California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey, all much larger states.
To put it another way, Massachusetts is once again fighting way above its weight class, but not in a good way.
These grim numbers are reminiscent of the darkest days of the COVID Panic of 2020, when bust-out Gov. Charlie Parker was simultaneously generating the highest unemployment rates in the nation, as well as the number-three COVID death toll.
According to IRS stats, the top five states hemorrhaging income produced by people who aren’t on welfare all have Democrat governors.
The top four states gaining income are Republican-run – Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Tennessee. And the number-five state, North Carolina, soon will be.
Coincidence?
Here’s another coincidence: three of the four top states that gained the most wealth in 2022 don’t have a state income tax.
As you would expect, state-run media in Boston has given this dire report a good leaving alone. It doesn’t advance the narrative of The Party.
Comrades, pay no attention to the brain drain and the work dearth afflicting Massachusetts. Avert your eyes from the rapes in the illegal-alien Haitian flophouses, or the epidemic of stabbings on Cape Cod.
Concentrate on the good news in Massachusetts. Bike lanes! Pride parades! Sumner Tunnel is being closed again! And, er, that’s about it.
You’re not supposed to notice what’s going on. George Orwell summed it up well in 1984:
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The Pioneer Institute broke out the doleful IRS statistics last week. The largest demographic cohort here voting with their feet were 26-35 year olds. Almost 10,000 beginning their working lives picked up stakes in 2022 – five times more in that age group that fled Massachusetts in 2012.
The biggest money hit came from boomers ages 55-65. Altogether, 4500 of them moved to greener pastures in 2022 – 15 times as many as left in 2012.
Fifteen times as many taxpayers in their prime earning years fleeing Massachusetts as a decade earlier!
The boomers took with them $1.5 billion. Live Free or Die… or maybe in the Sunshine State.
The Pioneer Institute noted that most of the losses came from people making more than $200,000 a year.
Democrats, of course, say that this is no big deal. For every working-class, law-abiding American who checks out of this kakistocracy, two or three illegal aliens are flopping into Logan Airport, banging their tin cups and demanding culturally-appropriate free eats.
Even more ominously, these dire numbers are from 2022 – the year before the so-called “millionaires’ tax” went into effect here.
I tweeted the study out yesterday and a guy with the handle Mike R wrote back:
“I’m sure the millionaires’ tax had nothing to do with it. Who would have ever thought they would just move to states with no state income tax?”
But what’s going on is about more than money.
It’s also the complete disrespect that everyone who plays by the rules is now treated with in Massachusetts. No-whites-invited Christmas parties in public buildings. Blow-in hacks making $196,551 a year publicly fantasizing about stripping blue-collar tradesmen in F-150 trucks of their drivers’ licenses.
Or throwing American citizens – including veterans – out of motel rooms they were paying for to make room for unskilled, non-English-speaking, unemployable illegal aliens.
How about all the young Americans with families – real families — who scrimped and saved to move out of the city? They overpaid for tiny houses in suburbs like Norfolk, because the town had a decent public-school system. And now their schools are about to be inundated by… undocumented Democrats.
You better believe those people will be showing up in the flight numbers that come out in 2027 or 2028.
Here are some of my other tweet responses to this IRS news that was so thoroughly suppressed by Boston’s Ministry of Truth:
Jerry T: “Maura Healey and Mayor Wu, what absolute disgraces you are! What better metric do you need for a political leader? Bleeding tax revenues by the minute as long-time residents escape this disaster.”
Allan C: “No worries, it’s just taxpayers leaving. What could possibly go wrong?”
Rascal King: “Already bought a house in Florida.”
Hollywood D: “After graduating, first and most important was getting the heck out of MA.”
TA, who moved to Tennessee: “I should have moved years ago. No regrets leaving a state that’s being destroyed by insane leftist policies, high taxes and unaffordable cost of living. Good riddance!”
Boston Mom: “Once again the same folks who think everything is okay with Biden also thought lockdowns, vaccine mandates and school closures were no big deal. These people live in la-la land.”
No, they live in Massachusetts. They’re very happy here.
They love their bicycle lanes.