We Shall Never Surrender!!
Ohio lost 33,017 individuals representing $6,378,014,000 in lost AGI from 2017 to 2021
Every year the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issues data showing the in and out migration of citizens using federal tax returns. This data leverages adjusted gross income (AGI) to highlight which states gained citizens and their wealth and which states lost. As with most lists, Ohio once again is in the wrong column. From 2017 to 2021 (latest data available representing four tax years), Ohio lost 33,017 individuals representing $6,378,014,000 in lost AGI. As the chart below shows, the outflow AGI grew by $1.5 billion in just four years from $6.5 billion in 2017-2018 to over $8.0 billion in 2020-2021.
We know Ohio lost another 44,000 citizens in 2020 and 2021 based on the U.S. Census data, so the outflow AGI likely increased even more and the lost AGI probably surpassed $10 billion. We won’t have the IRS data for those two tax years for another two years, but my estimates should be fairly close. At some point, we have to hope voters pull their heads out of the sand and punish the career politicians who have failed to make Ohio great again.
I often hear Establishment politicians like Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Ohio General Assembly leaders, and State Central Committee members dismiss the importance of right-to-work to Ohio’s jobs economy. What they really are saying is they are either too in hock to Big Labor (one of the top funders of Republican Establishment leaders—see the picture below) or too afraid to fight the big fight.
I have analyzed the data every month for fourteen years, so feel pretty comfortable making the following statements:
No policy would do more to spur job growth in Ohio than enacting right-to-work. Period.
The longitudinal data is crystal clear that right-to-work states utterly dominate forced unionization states.
As the chart below shows, since January 1990, of the twenty-four unionized states, fourteen occupy the bottom fifteen spots (spots 36 to 50) for net percentage job growth. Only West Virginia (ranked 48th) joins those bottom feeders, but that state just enacted right-to-work in 2016 so will need a decade to see that policy bear fruit. Only six of the twenty-four unionized states make the top twenty.
Unfortunately, unionized Ohio comes in a pathetic 45th, with only Michigan, Vermont, Rhode Island, and Connecticut doing worse over the last twenty-three years. This truly isn’t rocket science. If we want to change the arc of Ohio’s jobs economy, we have to do the one thing we haven’t done over the last thirty-three years—enact right-to-work.
In other news, nothing beats being on social media like being trolled by some anonymous twerp who has one follower:-) I usually ignore these folks, but thought I’d post a snarky retort. Needless to say, he didn’t respond thereafter.
Last week, I had the privilege of being on The Bruce Hooley Show on both Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, we discussed Congress's investigation of the Biden Family’s corruption and the increasing violence in Columbus due to ineffective left-wing policies. On Thursday with guest host Jack Windsor (starting at the 11:00 mark), we covered Winston Churchill and the lessons of history, Ohio's new-old waste of money tourism slogan, and Ohio's latest blowout budget stopping us from nixing the state income tax entirely.
As the details above demonstrate, we have so many big fights to fight in order to move Ohio from the back of the pack to the front. It won’t be easy and the Establishment will do what it can to undermine and defeat us. I hope you’ll join me in these fights, as I’ll need all of the allies I can muster. For those who do, as Churchill said about fighting the Nazis during World War II, we shall never surrender.