Greed Flows South by Harold Meyerson

[justaprogressive]

One of the constants of American history is that greed tends to flow south—to the American South, that is. Since the days of slavery, work has been exploited, devalued, and dishonored there, while ownership has reaped rewards that might otherwise have gone to labor. That basic description of the slave economy, alas, can fairly be applied to our national economy today. According to a January study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of Americans’ income paid out in salaries and wages declined from 70 percent in 1947 to 54 percent last year, while the share resulting from ownership rose from 30 percent to 46 percent.

The fundamental redistribution of the past 80 years reflects the weakening of New Deal reforms and the evisceration of unions, but also the adoption of economic policies rooted in the South. Even once slavery was officially abolished at the end of the Civil War, the ensuing Jim Crow/sharecropping economy reinforced the South’s status as the home of dirt cheap labor enjoying minimal legal protections. As early as the 1880s, textile manufacturers began relocating their mills from New England and other Northern states to the South, for the sole reason that work came a lot cheaper there. And in the century and a half since, Southern labor standards have dragged down workers’ incomes in every part of the nation.

Today, though, we’re seeing a new manifestation of this flight to the South. America’s centimillionaires and -billionaires are now either moving or threatening to move there, in some cases to escape the higher tax regimes of Northern blue states, in other cases just because gluttony loves company. It hasn’t required the threat of a wealth tax to produce the current billionaire distemper; the same cries of injured ego can currently be heard when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani proposes a 2 percent hike to the highest tax bracket in Gotham, or when an income tax for millionaires is instituted in Washington state. But as the gap between the economic and social policies of Northern blue states and Southern red ones has grown, The Wall Street Journal’s Friday “Mansion” section is chockablock with money-porn photos of the new mansions of relocating moguls springing up on Florida’s private islands and enclaves, where seldom is heard a discouraging word about ostentation. There’s a Zuckerberg here and a Ken Griffin there. The Washington Post reports that “Wells Fargo is relocating its wealth management headquarters from San Francisco to West Palm Beach.”

People move south, of course, for all kinds of reasons, and for a long time, those migrants were chiefly Northeastern and Midwestern retirees in flight from cold winters. During the past half-century, Northern migrants actually helped make three Southern states a good deal bluer. North Carolina’s Research Triangle, with its growing number of academics and postindustrial businesses, moved that state into the politically purple column, while a somewhat kindred effect in Atlanta had a similar effect on Georgia. The expansion of the D.C. suburbs and exurbs into Virginia has turned that state blue, or at least turquoise.

https://prospect.org/2026/04/06/greed-flows-south-billionaires-labor-taxes/