U-Haul’s release of its annual Growth Index tells us much about the state of red and blue states.

Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and South Carolina, in ascending order, experienced the most one-way U-Haul rentals in 2024.
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, in descending order, witnessed the largest net emigration according to the U-Haul data.
Some glaring common denominators characterize these two groups of states.
The first, somewhat superficial trait shared by the “grower” states involves voting patterns. They all voted red in the recent presidential election. Four of the five “slower” states voted blue, and the fifth, Pennsylvania, has voted blue from 1992 onward save for twice choosing Donald Trump.
Elections unleash consequences. We grasp this concept better outside of our borders.
The mere fact of the exodus of millions of Venezuelans from their homeland over the last decade instructs even the otherwise ignorant: all is not well. More than one in five Venezuelans live abroad. Marxist economics led to GDP per capita shrinking to less than half its levels a decade ago, runaway inflation that eroded the currency more in a month than the United States experienced with the dollar these last four years, and political oppression to the degree of rigging the most recent presidential election, begins to explain why Venezuelans increasingly live someplace other than Venezuela.
That man-made conditions cause departures on a grand scale from Pakistan, Sudan, and Turkey prompts no wave of objections. Noting aloud the same cause-and-effect of policy upon people when it comes to, say, California somehow elicits scoffs and incredulity.
Certainly, a monolith of policy does not reign even among the monochromatic states. Florida differs from Texas differs North Carolina. But in a few major ways concerning taxes and regulation, the states gaining movers share key policies, and the states losing movers share key policies.
The top five on...