You are here: Home » Political Pontifications » A Couple Thoughts About the Census

A Couple Thoughts About the Census

Jimmie | December 21, 2010 | Comments (1)

The Census Bureau released the results of the 2010 ennumeration and, from a political point of view, the GOP have to be pretty happy about the direction in which the population is moving. Seven states that voted Republican in the past three Presidential election picked up House seats and five that did not lost seats. The biggest winner in that regard was Texas, which picked up four House seats. As Ed Morrissey notes, the big GOP gains will be important in next year’s reapportionment fights — many of the state houses in states that picked up extra districts are now firmly in Republicans hands thanks to last November’s election. That means that many of the races we’ll see in 2012 are more likely to go Republican, strengthening the majority in the House.

That’s the politics of the census, and I’m sure we’ll see a dozen more stories about reapportionment, blue states vs red states, and why this all means that Barack Obama is in even more trouble in 2012 than his poll numbers indicate. I won’t add to that total. I would like to note two interesting numbers that caught my eye and make a short comment or two about each one.

1) From the article at The Hill: ”Also announced was the total U.S. population: 308,745,538. That’s a 9.7 percent increase from the 2000 population count.” A little quick math (okay, it’s not tough math) shows that in the past decade, we’ve only increased our population by .97 percent a year. That’s not nearly enough to keep pace with the demand our two big entitlement programs are going to press on us very soon. The looming Social Security and Medicare crises are going to be in our faces a lot quicker than we think if our population growth only creeps along at one percent.

2) From Patrick Ruffini’s Twitter feed: “Average tax rate in states gaining Congressional seats: 2.8%. Average tax rate in states losing them: 6.05%.” The obvious conclusion is that people much prefer to live in low-tax states than they do in high-tax states, but I don’t think that’s the right conclusion, or at least we shouldn’t stop at that conclusion. I think we can say with confidence that high tax states have two things in common aside from out-flowing populations. First, they have higher unemployment rates as employers tend to move away from states where they have to shell out more in taxes (Michigan, for example) to states where they will pay less (Texas or Florida). Second, they have higher levels of government spending. Look at the states most in danger of insolvency – CA, MI, NY, PA, OH, IL – and then look at the map at the top of this post. All but one of them are yellow. I think we can look on high taxes and low job creation rates as the reasons people move (and more the latter than the former, I believe), but the ultimate cause is the amount the state government spends. Lower spending means lower taxes, which leads to higher employment and a growing population. Higher spending means the opposite.

Pin It

Buffer