Ignoring Problems to Make Them Worse
With all the angst over the National Geographic article “The Emptied Prairie,” you’d think that somehow the people who know better are now living in a different universe. There weren’t any earth shattering revelations in the article. We all know the rural parts of the state are withering away. The reactions to the story are akin to a 5-year old covering his ear and going “la la la” when his parent tells him to do his chores.
Denying there is a demographics problem in North Dakota will not make it go away. The population is getting older; this is illustrated by the state’s human service budget - which has been out-of-control for the decade.
We know young people are leaving, this has been happening for a long time. But older folks in the prime of their income earning lives are also leaving the state as shown by the studies that quantify the lost income generating potential at $1 billion over the last decade.
Retired folks are also leaving, for better weather and better tax climates taking up residency in Florida, Nevada, or another state with no income tax because they don’t want to lose a dime of their retirement income.
The danger in ignoring these trends is this: as the population ages and retires, who is going to pick up the slack? We’re told there aren’t enough workers to man the oil rigs. We’re told there aren’t enough engineers and grad students to work the research projects at the universities. When are we going to wake up and stop denying there is a problem?
The fewer people of working age that there are, the higher the taxes will be for those that are working. These higher taxes will drive people out of the state, further burdening those left to work. Eventually the economy will stagnate as the population dwindles and North Dakota will bottom out at about 450,000 like Wyoming.
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Attacking a national magazine for holding the mirror up to our face is not going to solve anything. We need to increase population retention by reducing the tax burden, reducing the role of the state government in the economy, limiting spending, and reducing the tax rates – both income tax and property tax – for the long term.
