Blue Cities Are Out of Control

The Boston Globe ran a poll last December which found that a full third of respondents were thinking about leaving the state because of the high cost of living.

The Globe/Suffolk survey found that about one-third of Massachusetts voters have seriously considered leaving the state in the past year because of affordability pressures, even as a majority still believe the state is generally moving in the right direction. Inflation, health care costs, housing, taxes, and soaring utility bills topped the list of financial stressors.

Boston.com asked their readers how they felt and and even higher percentage said they were looking to move. Here’s one response they received:

“This state just keeps getting more and more expensive and there’s no end in sight. I realize that inflation and tariff impacts are a nationwide problem, but here in MA, it definitely feels worse. I feel that our elected officials, from my own town’s government up to the Governor herself, aren’t doing anything about it. They all just complain and blame the president, which I see as deflecting. My heating bills are insane, my grocery costs are eye-watering, and my taxes just keep going up year over year … It feels like MA is run by the ultra-wealthy elite, and I’m not in the club so I’m out of here.”

Another person said they planned to move to North Carolina and called staying in Massachusetts “financial suicide.” The numbers back up the anecdotes. The state is shrinking.

People are fleeing high-tax Massachusetts at a much higher rate than those moving to the Bay State, resulting in a net domestic out-migration of 182,145 over the past five years, according to a new watchdog report…

“The net loss of 182,000 residents to domestic outmigration is like losing one-and-a-half Cambridges,” Pioneer Institute Executive Director Jim Stergios said in a statement. “When you pair that with the loss of private-sector jobs — particularly in professional, scientific, and technical fields — it’s clear we have serious work to do to reverse a flagging economy.”

High taxes are almost certainly a part of the reason for the large number of residents headed to other states.

Just a decade ago, the economy in Massachusetts was growing. In 2016 its economy saw growth as high as 3.7 percent, above the national average. But high taxes coupled with rapidly growing state spending have eroded the state’s competitiveness.

Since 2018, the state budget has increased by more than 50 percent — far outpacing inflation or family income growth. CNBC now ranks us 49th in the cost of doing business. The Tax Foundation’s 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index ranked Massachusetts 43rd overall.

Of course Massachusetts isn’t the only state facing these problems. California, New York and Illinois also top the list of states with a lot of people leaving. One reason taxes are so high in blue cities and states is the high cost of unionized labor.

Blue-state and blue-city voters pay higher taxes. More than half of city and local government expenditures (and 20 percent of state expenditures) are paid out to employees. These blue states and cities often also pay state and local government workers more than similar jobs pay in red jurisdictions, even after adjusting for the cost of living.

Much of this gap is tied up in pension benefits. Workers generally value higher wages today more than retirement guarantees in the future. But pensions are attractive to politicians who pass future costs to future taxpayers. And it is the job of unions to fight for the largest benefits they can…

Consider Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. A fearless opponent of Donald Trump, his bravery failed him when Chicago police and firefighter unions sought to raise pensions, often by thousands of dollars. Against the advice of civic and business leaders concerned about, as they put it, “grossly underfunded pensions,” Mr. Pritzker signed legislation that partly undid a 2010 attempt to rein in benefits for new employees.

The new law will cost the city $60 million next year — more than enough money to cover the city’s summer job program — before ballooning to $11 billion over three decades. Because of Illinois’s Constitution, the commitments cannot be reversed.

About half of union members in the U.S. are public sector workers, meaning they represent workers by securing labor agreements with elected officials. And those elected officials in turn rely on the support and funding of labor unions to get elected. This is great for unions and democratic politicians but it’s terrible for taxpayers who get stuck with bills that gradually make up a significant portion of city and state budgets. For instance, about 40% of Chicago’s annual budget goes to pensions and debt service. Statewide that figure is around 30%. This makes it very difficult for elected officials to do anything about high taxes.

Finally, Fareed Zakaria had a good segment on his show in which he made the case that blue cities are out of control. He’s primarily talking about New York City and Los Angeles, but the problems are the same as the ones in Boston and Chicago. High taxes and high cost of living created by ever-expanding city and state budgets that outstrip the rate of inflation and ignore shrinking populations. This is more than 6 minutes long but it’s all worth watching.

Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off fiscal problems to some future day.

Democrats in city halls should stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work.

My take: pic.twitter.com/kwYkA4XEjx

— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) February 22, 2026

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