Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Bulletproof analysis, that.
By the same logic, the vast majority of Americans must prefer liberal politics since many, many more people live in CA and the Northeast in high density blue states. And in RI, we prefer lower performing schools over higher performing ones because so many more people live in Providence than in Barrington. Isn’t righty “logic” fun?

Ah, out come the ad hominem attacks.
As to why folks move from CA to TX, my guess would be housing costs or maybe the better Tex/Mex. The point is, who knows?
Last I checked, none of that is an excuse for uncritically parroting junk math. Otherwise, etc, etc.

That’s the best you got? “who knows?” And as for “attacks”, it would seem that’s what you started with. So it’s ok for you to come out blasting the post, but not ok for me to ask you for a reasoning behind your disagreement. Gotcha.
It would seem to reason that when almost all high tax states lose population and low tax states gain population, there just might be a correlation there.
As for good Mexican food, southern California’s got that one going pretty well too.

My prediction: If the 2010 elections in this state produce the same old, same old, you won’t be able to rent a UHaul here. The producers will leave in droves. Because they can. Anyone care to wager?

Russ,
You really should read your sources before providing them… or at least don’t assume that your rhetorical opposition won’t read them. Apart from saying multiple times that different methodologies make comparisons of overall scores useless, a quick review suggests that Rhode Island’s high density of universities and hospitals and small (and shrinking) overall workforce account for much of our “success.”
Some of the individual rankings that should indicate a healthy economy are abysmal, for RI. Fastest Growing Firms: 45. Entrepreneurial Activity: 31. Technology in Schools: 45 (wonder where all our education “investment” goes…). And I don’t suppose you’d like to credit the flat tax and formerly out-fazing capital gains tax for some of our better ranks.

Andrew,
To clarify, I’m thinking more along the lines of Kotkin (in the article’s reference). It isn’t the number or level of benefits, per se, rather, it is their quality. You can have a high tax model that attempts to deliver lots of benefits but does a very poor job of implementation and ends up delivering poor value. At the other end, you can have a low tax, low benefit package where the benefits are very high quality (though relatively less extensive) that delivers superior value.
The key distinction isn’t so much in the number of benefits, rather, it is in how well they are delivered, by whatever metric you choose. RI, for example, has chosen to charge high taxes for a very broad offering to the citizens of the Ocean State. However, they have completely cocked up the implementation/delivery of that offering, which has resulted in inferior value for money compared to other state, and, consequently, accelerating out-migration by people who we can least afford to lose.

Sorry, Andrew, but a single data point by definition cannot establish “a correlation between two variables.” And note that even if we assume that there is a correlation, that is not to say that implies causation (for instance, I always brush my teeth in the morning and the sun always rises). As I said above, who knows? Again, I don’t think one needs an engineering degree to understand this stuff, but from your response I’d say picking up the Mlodinow book would do you some good.
And as to dense states
“proving” our love of liberalism, I’m only pointing out how ridiculous this all is.

>>But RRI’s idea that “productive / middle class people who actually work for a living” are being “displaced by non-productive people” is at best demonstrably false and at worst thinly veiled racism. In fact, the report details the benefits of foreign immigration in business and job creation.
Why did I know that the racism charge would be forthcoming?
As for “demonstrably false” the proof is in the pudding. RI and Michigan are the two states actually losing population.
Rhode Island’s Hispanic population has gone from next to nothing a couple of decades ago to double digits – meaning that an similar number of native born have left.
We all know that the bulk of the Hispanic population here is low skilled, typically illegal and producing anchor babies in need of ESL and special ed. Exhibit 1: the Providence and Central Falls and Woonsocket school systems.
Unlike the period preceding the Ted Kennedy immigration “reforms” of the 1960’s, our immigration policy is not favoring educated, skilled immigrants so that we are importing the best and brightest, but instead today is skewed toward importing third-world poverty.
Importing welfare recipients — who receive more in public benefits than their entire gross income, much less the fact that they don’t any pay taxes – – is not economically stimulative, except to the warped world-view of Kate Brewster and the folks at the Poverty Institute.
Rhode Island is becoming poorer as its middle-class is being decimated by the double-whammy of high taxes to subsidize the public-worker aristocracy and poverty industry, and ever-declining job opportunities as employers look at things like the Forbes rankings of business climate and avoid corrupt, high-tax, poorly educated, collapsing-infrastructured Rhode Island.

Russ,
Please explain to me what immigration status has to do with ethnicity / race?
Is it your position that most people who have entered or remain in the United States illegally aren’t Hispanic? I guess that La Raza and McCain-Kennedy didn’t get the memo.
Do you mean that the Irish illegals in South Boston are really Hispanic, since your logic appears to be that illegal status means that one is Hispanic?
I’ve noticed that on census forms and EEO employment application questionnaires they ask if one is, e.g., Hispanic? Is it your position that these are questions regarding immigration / citizenship status?
Funny, on the I-9 verification of employment eligibility form they don’t ask about ethnicity, but immigration / citizenship status.
Funny, I prefer to deal with reality, not political correctness — or unilateral surrender in the debate of ideas in order to avoid tactical but fallacious allegations of racism from the other side.
So let’s deal with facts, shall we?
By far most illegal aliens in the country are Hispanic (and while technically anchor babies are “legal” – they wouldn’t be here but for illegal immigration).
By far most of them are poor and unskilled. Last time I looked, that was an economic condition, not an ethnic one. A characteristic shared with past great waves of immigrants, such as Italians and Irish (albeit most of whom entered legally).
Another politically incorrect news flash.
By far most, if not all, Islamic terrorists are Muslims — that’s why they’re ISLAMIC terrorists!
So now you can accuse me of racially profiling Muslims.
Knock yourself out.

“There are 34 examples in the dataset being discussed. That’s enough for some statistical inference.”
That’s sort of like saying that the fact that everyone on my street brushes their teeth every morning and the sun rises is more relevant than my previous example. Not so.
That’s not to say the data point isn’t interesting in forming a hypothesis: that migration and tax rates are related. But you can’t prove the hypothesis with the same data set you used to form the hypothesis.
What you’d look for is a statistical analysis that controls other variables and then looks for how closely migration changes when tax rates change. That’s proof of correlation, which can occur in varying degrees (strong vs. weak correlation). Again, that’s not to say that would be proof that one causes the other, only that the variables are related.
Easier said than done, as it’s very difficult if not impossible to control other variables and raising/lower taxes to prove a theory isn’t such a great political platform. I did here of some interesting things going on in virtual communities.