What You Should Be Reading: July 2026
Vladlena Klymova
July 31, 2026
Welcome back to “What You Should Be Reading,” a monthly series in which the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) presents noteworthy additions to the corpus of public-policy literature.
July’s edition includes the latest interstate migration data, a blueprint for replacing, not merely mending, the fraying social safety net, and the fiscal bloat afflicting the federal government’s trillion-dollar healthcare programs.
The Mercatus Center: “Interstate Migration Trends in the United States, 2018–2023: Where Are Americans Moving, and Why?”
Between 2018 and 2023, Americans relocated 33.9 million times to a new state. States such as New York have steadily lost residents, while domestic migration patterns have increased the populations of the Sun Belt and, recently, even the Rust Belt. “The standard narrative focuses on affordability and climate. But the data point elsewhere: toward tax policy and housing supply,” notes Jack Salmon of the Mercatus Center.
Indeed, preferring palm trees to snow cannot explain why “[o]n net, Florida gained the most movers (+911,422), while California lost the most (−1,263,365).” The cost-of-living argument alone cannot account for the fact that cold and relatively expensive New Hampshire and Delaware experienced some of the highest rates of domestic in-migration—rates much higher than those experienced by cheap and warm Arkansas and Alabama—while much more affordable Ohio and Louisiana lost population.
Salmon examined myriad factors that are said to influence Americans’ decisions to relocate and concluded: “Across all specifications, tax burden is the most powerful and robust predictor of migration. States with lower taxes attract more people. That result holds even when controlling for housing permit issuance rates, climate, population density, and cost of living.”
“But tax burden is not the whole story,” Salmon continues. Housing supply––another variable in his analysis that was positively correlated with in-migration––“determines whether a state can accommodate new residents without sharply increasing costs.”
“The migration patterns from 2018 to 2023 are not primarily about sunshine or sticker prices. They reflect something deeper: how states structure their economies,” he elaborates.
“In other words, it is tempting to say people move to cheaper states. But ‘cheap’ is an outcome, not a cause.” People move to Idaho, which saw the highest relative population growth in the country (+63.1 residents per 1,000), not merely because it is cheap. Rather, they move because Idaho has one of the most competitive tax regimes in the country—with low property, sales, and personal income taxes—and because its government is focused on allowing the housing supply to grow.
And the opposite holds true: “High-cost states tend to be places with restrictive housing supply, higher taxes, and tighter regulatory environments. Those underlying factors both raise prices and push people out.” Data from states like Maryland, with its uncompetitive tax structure and restrictive zoning, reinforces this argument. But New York—with its worst-in-the-nation tax code and some of the nation’s most restrictive rules on housing construction, which contribute to its highest in the nation housing costs—is a quintessential example. Between 2018 and 2023, it lost more residents relative to its population than any other state.
It behooves state governments to focus on their tax and regulatory competitiveness rather than fixate on combating rising costs, an approach that more often than not produces policies such as price controls. “States that prioritize competitive tax structures and allow housing supply to respond to demand are more likely to experience sustained population growth.”
Sutherland Institute: “The Safety Net We’d Build Today: Empowerment Accounts as a State-Led Pilot Concept”
The American Dream conjures varying images in people’s minds. For many, it represents the land of opportunity: America’s promise of freedom of choice, mobility, and independence.
Poverty has fallen by over 90 percent since the 1960s—if measured correctly. Since 1979, inflation-adjusted incomes in the bottom quintile have increased by 97 percent. And 70 to 75 percent of Americans born in the 1980s outperform their parents economically. The nation’s promise of opportunity has not been broken.
But many welfare-trapped Americans are hindered from sharing in it because America’s economic growth, not government programs, delivers that promise. “A social welfare system that discourages work, burdens low-income families with complicated bureaucracy, and constrains thoughtful innovation is a far cry from ‘an America in which every citizen shares all the opportunities of his society,’” argues Nic Dunn at the Sutherland Institute in his recent paper.
Actual benefit cliffs, or the fear of them, discourage Americans dependent on the federal safety net from “[w]orking harder and earning more.” Some intentionally forgo economic opportunities as a result. Moreover, navigating the byzantine welfare state is incredibly difficult: akin to having a “second (or third or fourth) job” for low-wage workers enrolled in several of the more than 90 dispersed, discordant programs.
“An empowerment account,” Dunn proposes, “would consolidate the funding from multiple of these fragmented programs into a single, streamlined benefit—delivered monthly, tied to work or training, and designed to phase out gradually as earnings rise rather than collapsing at a cliff.”
Tested in a state-level pilot program, this approach would replace multiple safety-net programs with a unified, carefully crafted, one-door assistance program integrated into the existing state-level administrative apparatus. Of course, such a reenvisioning of federal welfare is impossible without changing its decades-old intellectual and policy framing.
To that end, Dunn insists that “we must reframe the way we think about social safety-net reform—away from solely ‘tinkering.’” Aspirationally, “our nation’s social welfare system should prioritize work-based independence as the ultimate goal, with temporary material aid as a step along that path.”
Paragon Health Institute: “Restoring Fiscal Sustainability to Federal Health Programs”
The federal government spent roughly $2.2 trillion on health programs in fiscal year 2025—roughly 31 percent of all federal spending, and 7.2 percent of GDP. Medicare spending alone is projected to soar over the next few decades. It will double, reaching $2.5 trillion, in just 10 years. And the “widening gap between total spending and dedicated revenues is financed by general revenues and borrowing, adding directly to the national debt,” Brian Blase of the Paragon Health Institute notes. Despite this massive growth in spending, “health outcomes have not improved commensurately.”
The fundamental problem is structural. Blase argues that “policymakers have repeatedly designed programs around open-ended federal commitments and open-ended federal reimbursement structures that reward higher spending rather than higher value.” Medicare often rewards higher-cost sites of care, and its distortions of the prices of drugs and insurance plans reverberate throughout the rest of the healthcare market. Medicaid incentivizes states to pursue more federal matching funds—to their own benefit, and not the benefit of enrollees. And the Obamacare subsidy structure and zero-premium enrollment lead to eligibility bloat and soaring federal costs. “Although these programs differ in many respects, they share a common flaw: their financing structures drive higher spending rather than greater value,” Blase explains.
But entrenched government policies also permeate the private sector. The tax break for employer-provided health insurance and the growth of the 340B program inflate insurance and drug costs throughout the U.S. healthcare system. Behind proliferating headlines about unaffordable healthcare in America lies a baleful system of federal regulation and government-run healthcare—one that rewards higher spending, distorts prices, and fails taxpayers and patients alike.
Note: TPA highlights research projects that contribute meaningfully to important public-policy discussions. TPA does not necessarily endorse the policy recommendations the featured authors make.