The special army of 2010 Census workers is still being demobilized, but we already know that the south (including Texas, of course) is going to gain a lot of new Congressmen and certain northern states are going to lose. You can chart the way various states are faring by examining the various counties within them. It was clear even from figures from the boom times of a couple of years ago; I expect that the trends are stronger now.
With the exception of the political swing state of Ohio, almost all the states that have backed liberal candidates for the White House and Congress lead those losing Congressional districts. It's a blue state phenomenon. But it is not politics that characterizes this decline, but public policies. States (including Ohio) that have over-spent and over-taxed are hurting most.
The new "civil war" is really a struggle over those public policies. California, which since statehood never before failed to gain Congressional representation, is not going to gain any after this Census. The once-Golden State actually is losing people by the hundreds of thousands as punitive taxes and regulations destroy manufacturing and agriculture. People who own or run factories and farms are being hurt, but so are their workers. The Central Valley is being literally decimated.
Texas, on the other hand, is still doing well, even as the recession runs on. Likewise Florida (also with no state income tax), South Carolina and Georgia. Indiana is not a southern state, but under Gov. Mitch Daniels, the Hoosier State finally has stopped losing population as the state government holds down state salaries and pensions and emphasizes private sector growth. Indiana shows that a northern state can turn itself around.
One sees therefore that the new civil war is not defined geographically. The armies I describe are made up, on one side, of small business people, entrepreneurs, family farmers, savers and professional people in all states, and, on the other side, public employee union leaders, the very rich and (alas) environmental and other non-profit activist groups that derive their support largely from the very rich. I have called it the "War Against Strivers".
Word about the real war finally has reached the fancy precincts of Manhattan, home to The New Yorker. In that journal's August 15 number James Surowiecki comes up with a typical mugged-liberal solution: tax the very rich even more heavily than those striving to get rich or, in New York, just trying to cover private school costs for kids and meet the rapacious taxes of Gotham City and The Empire State. (New York heads the list of depopulating states along with California, New Jersey and Michigan--all high taxers.) It has not yet dawned on The New Yorker types that high public spending and taxes kill the prospects of the great majority of people at all levels of income. The peculiarity of our system is that someone making two hundred thousand dollars a year and someone making two hundred million dollars a year pay at similar tax rates."
As I have said, the very rich are slow to get the point. Most don't really mind very high taxes because they are beyond caring about such things. Once you have a yacht, a private jet and several vacation homes, adding more only complicates your bookkeeping and saps your time with management details. You can enjoy giving your surplus away through a foundation, and beyond that you will be tempted to support tax increases to promote through government all the good things your philanthropy supports. There are still many unrepentant capitalists among the very rich, but, for the first times in 2006 and 2008, a majority of voters in that elevated status supported Democratic candidates. (The numbers of the very rich who think it important to support efforts to instill the values of thrift and entrepreneurism in the next generation is a tiny subset of even those who do support free market capitalism.)
If you want to know where misguided socio-economic attitudes and alliances lead, look to California. Joel Kotkin at Chapman College in Orange, CA writes in City magazine about "The Golden State's War on Itself". It is indeed a peep into the larger war between the strivers and the privileged insiders--the government operators and their allies among the very rich.
California shows that you can't run a country on high spending, high tax, high regulatory policies forever. Before long, everyone--including what become the "formerly very rich"--are sucked down.
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