OtherWise

26Voting with Your Feet

If digital media companies have contributed to the fragmentation of American society, they have had potent allies in Mayflower Moving, National Van Lines, and the Seven Santini Brothers.

Journalist Bill Bishop analyzed zip code data going back four decades and discovered that people are not only expressing their political opinions in election booths, they are also voting with their feet. What Bishop uncovered was a stark change in American migration patterns. Starting in the 1970s, people moved for very different reasons as compared with earlier migrations. The great movement of blacks from the South to the industrial North following World War II was motivated by economic hardship and opportunity. But in the last four ...