[quote=EconProf]sdr, thanks for making my point. Working from home means people are choosing to live away from the big cities and are moving into exurban areas, or entirely different states. Thus the move out of CA to neighboring states while keeping their job and “checking in” at the home office weekly or monthly.
Your comment that people moving “says nothing about politics”…? For many people,it might be fully explained by politics of the two areas.
Here in St. George are two trends that prove that. Direct flights from LA to little St. George were recently introduced to accommodate such workers. Housing developments near our airport are exploding. And if they spend 51% of their days here, they escape CA taxes. Second, many Californians have second homes here, and due to the COVID lockdowns in CA are spending more of their time in Utah where our schools and universities stayed largely open. Enrollment in the local university during COVID jumped about 10% while CA universities went to useless distance “learning”.[/quote]
St George is over 300 miles from salt lake city and is in the middle of nowhere. It has no industry to speak of, a college that is more comparable to a community college here than a research university and a population significantly smaller than Carlsbad. A few hundred or even thousand people going there isn’t even a rounding error vis a vis the CA population. CA still is the Golden State and more wealth is created in SD County than the entire state of Utah. SD companies received more venture funding this quarter then the entire State of Utah does for a full year. That won’t change. You’ll dominate the bingo halls
