Mother Jones Calls For "Soft Secession" From the USA (sigh)
If the Mother Jones worldview were correct, people would be fleeing Texas for California, not the other way around. Those who dream of divorce should remember who pays the mortgage...
The myth: blue states “subsidize” red states.
The reality: they subsidize a system that props up their own tech, finance, and export sectors. Break the system, you break your market.
Every few years, a certain kind of progressive essayist rediscovers the idea of “soft secession.” The fantasy goes like this: the prosperous blue states link arms, wall themselves off from the brutish red hinterlands, and re-create the Union in their own image. The latest entry, published by Mother Jones, insists that “responsible” America should start cutting economic and political ties with its less enlightened cousins.
It is a delicious delusion for the graduate-seminar class, but it collapses instantly under real-world scrutiny.
1. A Union of Interdependence
The United States is not a patchwork of self-contained fiefdoms. It is a single market. Supply chains, logistics networks, and federal systems in aviation, energy, and finance cross every red-blue border a hundred times a day. A gallon of California milk relies on Iowa feed, Texas fuel, and Tennessee trucking. Try “decoupling” that and you collapse half the economy before lunch.
The romance of a self-sufficient coastal confederacy is geopolitically naïve. California cannot power itself without Western grids, and New York depends on Midwestern manufacturing.
2. Blue-State Prosperity Is Actually Federal Prosperity
The essay sells the idea that blue states could thrive on their own wealth. But blue wealth is a federal product. Silicon Valley, the NIH corridor, and Wall Street all depend on federal research grants, defense contracts, and monetary stability. The so-called “blue economy” floats on the American system it now pretends to transcend.
A real secession, even a “soft” one, would rupture those veins of capital and credit. Markets would price it as national fragmentation, and every pension fund from Palo Alto to Providence would feel it.
3. The Myth of Red-State Backwardness
Then comes the condescension: red states as economic freeloaders. It is numerically lazy and obtuse.
Yes, blue states post higher median incomes because they are urban, dense, and expensive (i.e., NYC, LA and Chicago are the largest cities in America). Adjust for cost of living and net domestic migration, and growth tilts red. The Sunbelt’s population boom, energy exports, and manufacturing reshoring are not flukes. They are the predictable results of lower taxes, cheaper land, and pro-enterprise governance.
If the Mother Jones worldview were correct, people would be fleeing Texas for California, not the other way around.
4. The Federal-Transfer Sleight of Hand
Critics love to note that red states “take more” in federal aid. But much of that money funds national defense, agriculture, and energy that keep blue economies running. Federal spending is not charity. It is the cost of keeping the republic stitched together.
Taxpayers in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia are no longer beggars at the blue-state table. They are building the very industries—energy, logistics, semiconductors, ports—that will anchor the next American century.
5. Lessons from the Red-State Laboratories
Not every red-state experiment succeeds. Kansas tried to sprint on tax cuts and stumbled. But the laboratories of low-cost governance are learning faster than Washington. While Illinois and California flirt with fiscal insolvency, Florida and Tennessee run surpluses, draw migration, and lead in small-business formation.
People vote with their U-Hauls.
6. The Moral Error of Exitism
More than bad economics, “soft secession” is bad citizenship. It treats millions of Americans as disposable for the comfort of a few elites who imagine they can purchase moral purity through isolation.
A republic cannot survive if its wealthiest regions behave like gated communities. Blue America needs red America’s energy, food, and discipline. Red America needs blue America’s capital, research, and culture. The bargain is imperfect, but it is irreplaceable.
7. A Better Ambition
The answer to national dysfunction is not retreat but renewal. Rebuild federal competence, modernize energy grids, decentralize regulation, and reward productivity instead of grievance. There is grandeur in fixing the machine rather than fleeing it.
“Soft secession” is a soft-minded substitute for statesmanship.
A Rough Quantitative Thought Experiment
Cal can’t secede, but for sake of the argument, if they were to secede, it is clear that California loses something like 15 percent of its GDP in the first few years from trade disruption, capital flight, and loss of federal support, that is roughly $600 billion off a $4 trillion base. Over time, compounding effects could push the loss to 20 or 30 percent, meaning $800 billion to $1 trillion below baseline.
Even in conservative scenarios, a $300 to $600 billion loss is plausible. California would also face a massive fiscal hole, having to replace federal revenues for defense, healthcare, and the social safety net. That means higher taxes or reduced services, both of which would choke growth further.
The U.S. economy, far more diversified, would absorb the loss. Losing 14 percent of GDP is painful, but the other 86 percent would adapt, reallocate industries, and move on. The rest of the country can survive without California. California cannot survive without the country.
And beyond that, California cannot legally or functionally secede. Even “soft” versions collapse under the Constitution, economic interdependence, and political reality.
The union is not a marriage of convenience. It is the greatest economic engine in human history. Those who dream of divorce should remember who pays the mortgage.
If you wish to read more about the issues with Leftist California Nationalism, which is a coastal-upper-middle-class-thought-combo-from-hell, check out my book The Myth of California.
Endorsements for “The Myth of California”
“California was once America’s “Promised Land” where people flocked to find gold, good weather, and opportunities in everything from movies to manufacturing. It was the agricultural epicenter of the world, known as the “salad bowl” of the planet. But decades of leftist leadership has destroyed everything but the weather. It’s become “Paradise Lost” with homelessness, unanswered crime, and choking tax rates and regulations causing people to flee in stunning numbers to get to places where their families can live without the boot of big government on their necks and cultural cuckoos setting the atmosphere of the lifestyle. Chad Hagan details what happened in his riveting book, “The Myth of California: How Big Government Destroyed the Golden State.” It’s the tragic story of how the irrational left destroys everything it touches and how one state exchanged its gold for garbage. - Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas, Bestselling Author, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel
“My father was a car salesman in a town of 800 people in Northern Minnesota. He had one vacation in his working life, and we took a trip to California. He had a friend who had settled in Carlsbad years earlier and wanted to visit. I was 10. My brother was 11, and our sister was 7. We were in awe. It was a modest home, beautifully maintained, with a yard full of fruit trees. We picked oranges and ate them in the yard. We had grapefruit off the trees for breakfast. I dreamed of moving to California for years. No longer! Chad Hagan’s book, The Myth of California, will make you disappointed, infuriated, and then just plain sad. It is a cautionary tale about how politicians can destroy a paradise in one lifetime. Ultimately, unchecked political power serves only itself. The citizens are included only to pay the bills. It is also a testament to how the crazies run the world. Most of us just want to go to work, come home and relax, and build a family and life. The crazies don’t think that way. They are loud, and they vote. Ultimately, politicians whose only interest is in power, cave in to them. (A government permit needed to wear heels taller than 2 inches in Carmel? Spare me!) As Californians now flee in droves, the stories they tell disabuse us of any notion of paradise. This book does that in spades. Read it!” - John Linder, Former U.S. Congressman (GA-7)