If you reside in a Blue-State and are "True Blue", I want to point out why I think that this could be incredibly damaging to your future financial security, your children's education, your ability to leave an estate to your heirs, etc...
The Blue-States are in complete denial about their future. Any rational examination of the data coming out of the Census would lead one to see clearly that the producing elements in American society are migrating to lower tax/smaller government/less regulation Red-States. As the late, great Senator from New York Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously quipped:
Everybody is entitled to their own opinion... but not their own facts.
That this is happening is NOT UP FOR DEBATE. Why it is happening might be, but not the salient fact of the matter... So let us debate the WHY.
I grew up in Metro New York City, went to college in the South, and then headed back to NYC to go to work. Know what happened once I started to make decent money? I moved. Yep, the New York State and City income taxes took 12.5% of my gross income; said the OTHER way my take home compensation would increase by about 20% if I moved to Florida. (Guess what New York State did? They fought me on the DATE that I moved so that they could collect the income taxes on a couple of extra months. They extorted that money from me... and it just wasn't worth fighting with them any longer... so I just gave in and paid the extortionist. I have made it a point to spend as little in their state ever since.)
Hmmmmmm... guess how long it took me to make that move? Right. I could do what I do from anywhere... why would I do it in a confiscatory tax and regulatory environment? Why would I fund people whose political goals I found to be near treason?
This is happening in the macro sense as we speak. People are moving from high property and income tax states and localities to low income tax states and localities. Period.
This is also happening at the national level as jobs move to Chindia, et al... our ridiculous regulatory environment helped to assur this just as sure G-d made little green apples...
But there is another problem...
As people move from Blue to Red, they are downsizing, frugalizing, de-pressurizing. Part of the "simplify your life" thing also cuts out the very overhead that encouraged (forced) the dual income rat race on us in the first place. This spring my wive and I are moving to the farm full time. I plan to work managing money for a fund out of a home office & run the farm, and my wife plans to take care of the home and kids. This is not the kind of lifestyle that supports a great deal of government. If (as) it continues to grow as a lifestyle things like gasoline taxes, property taxes at offices, sales taxes at restaurants AND INCOME TAXES... will go down like a rock in a pond.
(Think of the irony.... the environmentalist Left, with whom I am somewhat sympathetic, have vociferously argued for a smaller carbon footprint to come from the biggest offenders - guys like me. So I move to rural Tennessee... cut back on driving and consuming... grow my own food... as a result government receipts of sales and property taxes from yours truly plummet, and if the environmentalist Left is successful in spreading this to too many others of my ilk they will be destroying budgets and funding for social programs... there are no actions without unintended consequences. NEVER.)
Meanwhile, back in the Blue-States... tax revenues will continue to decline even as the relative demand on those revenues for services climb, forcing more of the productive citizens down to the Red States, increasing the Red States' populations and political influence... very definition of the vicious cycle you'v heard tell about.
The fly in ointment for Red States is that their pension systems are nearly as FUBAR as the Blue States...