Way back, even before I was old enough to really begin misspending my youth, there was a syrupy ballad on the radio that just used to tear the heart out of all of us teenage girls on the bus headed to high school in the morning.
Please, come to Boston for the Springtime
I’m stayin’ here with some friends, and they’ve got lots of room
And you can sell your paintings on the side-walk
By a café where I hope to be workin’ soon
Please, come to Boston
It didn’t hurt that the troubadour warbling it so soulfully, Dave Loggins (Kenny Loggins’ cousin), looked like the typical mid-70s heart throb, and the thought that he was wailing for lack of companionship in Boston was almost too much to take.
It’s kind of wild now, some serious decades later, that it’s not a lonely guy looking for love in Beantown who will soon be reprising that old hit, but the governor of Massachusetts and perhaps even insufferable Boston mayor Michelle Wu herself.
Only they’re going to have kind of the exact opposite problem. They’ve driven everyone off, and, at the moment, are doing everything they can to make sure they stay gone.
There have been some indicators that things were not going Governor Maura Healey’s heavy tax-and-spend way, but the feisty little woman and her toadies in the legislature have chosen to ignore the aurguries.
Like when a venerated brand named for an iconic MA seashore said, ‘We’re going to honor our roots, but we’re out of here.’‘ I don’t know – you’d have thought someone would ask why. But they just let them go.
Employees of Cape Cod Potato Chips in Hyannis have been notified they will lose their jobs.
The Campbell’s Company, which acquired the brand in 2018, announced it will the close Breeds Hill Road factory and move production elsewhere.
In a Jan. 29 press release, The Campbell’s Company (NASDAQ: CPB) announced its plans to close the Hyannis factory and lay off about 49 workers.
The company will help employees with separation benefits, job placement support, and guidance on how to tap into state assistance programs, according to the release.
…“In recognition of Cape Cod Chips’ brand heritage, Campbell’s plans to partner with local organizations that offer culinary entrepreneur programs, workforce development, and career pathways that align with the hospitality needs of the region. In addition, Hyannis and the greater Cape Cod community will continue to be eligible for community impact grants through The Campbell’s Foundation,” according to the release.
Founded in 1980, Cape Cod Potato Chips began as a small operation in downtown Hyannis before moving to a facility on Breeds Hill Road in 1985. The facility on 100 Breeds Hill Road sits on a six-acre property. The site is assessed at $3.4 million.
Oh, yay, governor!
You might not have paying jobs anymore, but you’ve got by God community grants for however long that lasts.
Everyone wants moar monies.
At state house presser, former Executive Councilor @AndruVolinsky makes the case for a 3% income tax to partially fund local schools. @nhgop @nhdems pic.twitter.com/uoNYvwlBvz
— NH Journal (@NewHampJournal) March 3, 2026
MOAR MONIES
In response to a budget shortage, some lawmakers are debating a proposal that would create a nearly 10 percent annual tax on personal earnings over $1 million. https://t.co/JlKvoL8ioT
— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) March 11, 2026
But the governor, who is apparently a progressive #mathz major, has declared that cutting income taxes would not make her state more affordable, even as lawmakers desperately scramble to try to encourage the targeted and very precious millionaire demographic to remain in the state.
…And produce the same disastrous results. Massachusetts is actually struggling with a huge population exodus as residents relocate to other states. Pioneer Institute economists call it the “hollowing out of Massachusetts’ workforce and economy.” Even veritable institutions in the state, such as Cape Cod Potato Chips, pulled out.
From April 2020 to July 2025, 182,000 residents fled to other states, causing a demographic decline and a serious brain drain. The evacuees skewed younger, particularly adults between 26 and 34, stripping the state’s future workforce and tax base.
Alarmed by the flood of companies and people leaving the state, fiscal reformers proposed a ballot initiative to lower the state’s income tax on nonmillionaires from 5% to 4%. But lefty Gov. Maura Healey said that “cutting income taxes doesn’t make Massachusetts more affordable.”
Really? It would save the average state taxpayer about $1,300 annually.
Sadly, as with so many other lefties, her idea of affordability is more government handouts. But the best affordability plan is a good job and a growing paycheck.These leftwing ideologues are hurting the least mobile people in their state, people stuck in a dead economy with few options.
That op-ed about the exits was from the Boston Herald, which you would expect to be somewhat aggressive about taxes and honest as far as their deleterious effect after a certain threshold.
What I’m sure Healey didn’t expect was the pile-on and the rather harsh figures coming out of the Boston Globe that echo those of the conservative curmudgeons and pose a serious threat to the state’s fiscal health.
The people who have it and can are leaving.
‘Everyone’s leaving’: Why more of the wealthy are moving from Massachusetts to other states
If there’s a group of people you probably don’t spend a lot of time worrying about, it’s those with tens — or hundreds — of millions of dollars.
But Paul Karger argues you should. At least, you should worry when they start heading for the exits.
Which is precisely what they’ve done in Massachusetts, says Karger, the cofounder and managing partner of Boston-based Twin Focus, a firm that manages investment portfolios for wealthy families.
“Half of my Massachusetts clients over the last five years have either left or are planning to leave,” Karger says. That represents “billions of dollars in net worth and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income.”
Now, part of this exit is understandable, but also unfair to the lower and middle-class residents trapped there, because I have no doubt that these very upwardly mobile types are also the very same ones who voted for Healey, the risible Wu, and all the other progressive miscreants running that state.
They destroy it by installing these mediocrities, don’t like what’s happened, and then they leave.
Thanks for nothing, right?
Just like we are being invaded by Silicon Valley types here in Florida, and they’ve already ruined Austin. No one needs them when they are so fond of bringing all their baggage and hoity-toity airs with them.
Another example – I remembered the vibrant discussions we had about the changes in Boise, Idaho, after the recent arson of the DHS offices there. How inbound California types had morphed the city into a progressive hub, complete with local Antifa chapters and anarchist clubs.
If you take a gander at this blue state outflow map, you can see it.
Please pass this. Please. You want to see more people leave the state? Complete Idiocracy pic.twitter.com/K2zYv5IO4d
— Paul Mokeski the legend (@Mokeskifortwo) March 11, 2026
According to the folks interviewed by the Globe, it’s not only the money that’s left, but it’s also the feeling that there’s nothing left in the state to start up with, because the talent who would naturally pick up on the trends to expand on them in whatever business? Those types have left, too.
…“The thing that scares me now,” Rodriguez says, “is that we’re in this natural period where the Silicon Valley machine is spinning really quickly with Anthropic and OpenAI and Cursor and all of these AI companies that are there. And instead of seeing some of that diffusion come back here, which would’ve been typical of prior waves, there’s no one back here to pick it up because everyone’s leaving or has left.”
In 2025, Welch, the entrepreneur, lost a high-profile court case after Massachusetts claimed he had undeclared income from the state. Welch — who lived in New Hampshire at the time — sold his $4.7 million share in a Massachusetts company he had founded about 20 years earlier. Welch argued that the shares were not awarded as income; at the time he received them, they had essentially no value. The Department of Revenue prevailed.
An investor who relocated to Florida told Rodriguez that “Massachusetts just feels ‘grabby’ for the first time.”
When it comes to tech and innovation, he says, “these geographic questions are about flywheels that start spinning. And you get enough people of a certain type, and the flywheel spins. And it’s easier for that next person to come and stay here. I think that the best thing you can have as a city or a state is a flywheel that’s unique to some source of intellectual capital or talent that is spinning really quickly.” (See the rise of biotech locally.)
He says when those flywheels “slow down — or God forbid, stop spinning altogether — then the difference between here and Milwaukee — not to pick on Milwaukee — is much less than people think.”
And whatever you’ve built, don’t even think about leaving it to your kids in that state.
The “Death Tax” is Driving Wealth Out of Massachusetts.
Did you know the vast majority of states have no state-level estate tax? Including Florida, Texas, California, Colorado, Virginia, New Jersey, and New Hampshire.
Massachusetts currently taxes estates valued over $2M.…
— RIP MASSACHUSETTS (@theripsnorter) March 8, 2026
…Massachusetts currently taxes estates valued over $2M. Compare that to our neighbors:
Vermont/Maryland: $5M
New York: ~$7M
Connecticut: ~$14M
The Bottom Line: To stop the “wealth drain” and protect family businesses, Massachusetts needs to raise its threshold to at least $5M. It’s time to align with regional trends and keep investment local.
Two million bucks could be a decent term life insurance policy. Forget anything else.
I would say that Massachusetts feeling ‘grabby‘ is just about the right term for it. Almost as if you can feel the fingers digging around the top of your pocket.
Not that they don’t have enough problems already in that state.
Massachusetts launches government portal encouraging residents to photograph, film, and report ICE agents in their neighborhoodshttps://t.co/F89u60NrYv
— Mass Daily News (@MassDailyNews) March 13, 2026
It’s just that some people are lucky enough to be able to walk away from them.
@nbc10boston New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows a net loss of 33,000 people to other states. #nbc10boston #massachusetts #news #video #fyp ♬ original sound – NBC10 Boston
While the rest are left to beg someone to please come to, say, like, Boston.
They’re gonna have lots of room at this rate.
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