Voting With Their Feet.

Reuters recently ran an article on young American Jews finding work and internships in Israel to avoid the American recession. The article also noted that many other young Americans were headed to Europe and Asia to find opportunities. New Zealand has seen a similar wave.

President Reagan had a story he used in several speeches, including his farewell address, about Vietnamese “boat people” fleeing to the United States. The story was used by the President to illustrate that it was America that people were struggling and fighting to get to… and not vice versa. Essentially, the story was about people voting with their feet.

By the numbers, the economic situation in America today is not that much worse (and by some metrics better) than the early 1990’s, the 1970’s or the Depression. What is different is our government’s response. The American economy is increasingly being controlled in a top down manner. Regardless of the effects that this will have on numerical indicators (which most free market scholars would argue will be negative), it will have a very bad effect on American moral. Israel, New Zealand and even most of Western Europe are not more affluent than America is today. But some of these foreign lands have increasingly more economic freedom, less of a rigid regulatory structure, less of an oppressive tax structure (especially for business) and an environment where people see the chance to make it big.