Sorry, add here and super lazy. I started reading the piece and within a few paragraphs I realized I was just reading a story about some couple I don't really give two shits about. Then I quickly scrolled up and down in the article and saw how long it was.
So can anyone tell me when it gets to the actual evidence that there is a brain drain? Make no mistake about it, my wife and I (my wife highly trained and me a software engineer) left a red state with our family partially, even only slightly so, because of state policies. So its not surprise it happens.
I'm a software engineer too. I was born in the deep south where even my grandmother disowned me because I told her people were going to die on January 6th because of trump, she said I was a liar and hung up and never answered my calls again. I moved to a purple state to balance out the MAGA extremists. The whole southeast is full of some of the least educated people in America, and the vast majority are red.
It started badly with that couple being the focus in a story-like section. Too long only to shift to discuss different reasons and examples of people leaving other states for various reasons. About 2/3 of the way through they finally get into demographics of college educated people, their economic benefits and new data on rates of leaving red states for blue states.
Eventually it was very good at describing the overall situation happening. But man, they didn't need to write so much about their personal lives. Especially at the beginning.
When I was a little child, my mother and I used to go to the beach to laugh at the seagulls. We'd pick up random shells and yell "hey stupid, here's food! Harharhar!" One day I was riding a donkey and fell on my ass, not sure if it was the donkey or my actual ass I don't remember. There were so many memories of apples and asses in my past that I love to walk down the isles of my local supermarket and dream of the revolution where apples and pineapples will rise together, put their differences apart, and eat the rich.
It's the classic "human interest" hook that probably works with most people. I didn't mind it, but yeah, it was long. The old a-spoonful-of-anecdote-helps-the-statistic-go-down method, but very poorly measured.
Eh I thought it was a fine article. The premise is in the title though. "knowledge workers", in this case health care professionals, are leaving red states for states that are at least going to leave us the fuck alone.
It’s the classic “human interest” hook that probably works with most people
But, like reality junk television, I didn't really care about the people involved. Where these people ultimately work and live don't affect any part of my life to where I'm actually interested in the details of the process. Any editor should have seen the copy, seen the headline, and then trimmed 2/3 from the front of the copy.