New website tracks intrastate “money moves” and more

Under the American system of federalism one of the easy ways to see which states are successful and which aren’t is to see how people move from state to state. While there are plenty of reasons for people to NOT move from one state to another, economics happens on the margins. And, over time (and for generations) people and their money have moved towards greater economic freedom.

Sadly, as anyone who follows New Mexico or the Rio Grande Foundation knows, New Mexico has long been a bastion of LESS economic freedom in the American Southwest. So, that means that people and their money continue to leave our state. You can check out the site and play around with its numerous useful features.

Below I have used the site to compare New Mexico and Arizona. RGF’s president wrote recently about the myriad economic advantages Arizona policies have over New Mexico’s. Taken directly from https://votewithyourfeet.net/

From 2012 to 2022, more people moved from New Mexico into Arizona than moved into New Mexico from Arizona.

In total, 16,335 people moved into Arizona, (referred to as the Net Domestic Migration), and took $599,689,000 with them, defined as AGI to individual income tax state data as provided by the IRS.

You can compare New Mexico and numerous other states against each other or find out how they are performing on a variety of population and financial metrics.