Great local barbecue, a more manageable daily pace of life, and reasonably priced mid-century modern furniture can only go so far as the perks of compromise. “Young women can say, ‘I don’t want to have an abortion,'” Janice Reals Ellig, general manager of a Manhattan headhunting boutique, told me, “but I want to be in a state that is favorable to women”. .’ Many in Texas are already concerned about the prospect of companies changing their plans to expand into the state or refusing to set up shop altogether. “We’ve had other social issues that have been controversial in the past,” Justin Yancy, president of the Texas Business Leadership Council, remarked to The Austin American-Statesman earlier this week, “but this might be a bigger test. important”.
It is easy to imagine a scenario in which these governance disparities only serve to cement the quasi-imperial status of a few major American cities, corrosively driving the economic and social divide between them and the rest of the country. Politicians in the North East have already tried to capitalize on the division; New York City Mayor Eric Adams was quick to point out that the state’s stance on social issues, like abortion access and LGBTQ rights, makes New York City more welcoming than other places.
Last month, Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts went further. He said the state could “encourage” businesses in places that have severely restricted reproductive rights to relocate to Massachusetts, where abortion access is readily available. Laws protecting reproductive freedom are in fact among the strictest in the country. If some companies accepted his offer, they would likely bring their employees with them.
The danger isn’t just that Austin, or Nashville, or Lawton, Okla., doesn’t appeal to certain people; it is also that others will simply choose to leave these places. As a concerned friend in Alabama told me last week, the threat of “brain drain is real.” Equally problematic is the likelihood that superstar cities like New York and Boston will dig deeper into talent hoarding.
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