Being a backwards and hostile place is why young people with any potential flee Maine. You can go hard about all those Massholes, but there is a premium on decency to consider that has economic impact, too. If Maine wants to make that choice, that's fine, but they're going to be paying and paying and paying for it.
I didn't much care for him as a governor at the time, but I saw John Baldacci speak around the time I graduated and he spoke of Maine's chief export: U-Hauls, carrying the state's best and brightest away. I've thought about moving back, because there are parts of Maine I miss...but it's neither economically nor politically stable and Maine misses out by that a lot more than I do.
>Being a backwards and hostile place is why young people with any potential flee Maine.
They don't flee it. They suck it up and move elsewhere for money. The high paying jobs are in the big cities, like Boston. Most of them (all the ones I know who live in MA) want to move back and really don't like the culture here but that's basically impossible do to once you've built a professional network and started to raise a family.
I graduated from UMaine. It was a morbid and forgone conclusion that we would all be moving to the Boston area if we wanted to make big bucks in our field. It was about the money, nothing else. People will put up with a lot of shit to make a buck.
>but it's neither economically nor politically stable
Politically stable? What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Yeah, the republicans with their backwards social policy can take the legislature or governor if they the dems try to push dumb stuff people don't actually want. That's a feature not a bug. It means both parties actually have a reason to pander to the voters (i.e. do what voter want them to, stupid or not). Democracy requires competition. No, Maine isn't a one party state and I assure you you do not want it to be. The party distinction is a more malleable and relative one at the state level (i.e. a rural Idaho democrat may as well be a NYC republican). One party states are very good stifling any progress not condoned by powers that be of the established party only. It's all bread and circuses with the occasional consenting to progress at the last minute when it looks like they might actually be challenged. Trust me, you do not want that. That is bad for democracy.
There's a reason this law was passed in Maine and not MA or CA.
Maine's as economically stable as any other state that doesn't have an industry that basically prints money (and in reality those industries tend to only float a region, not a whole state, e.g. finance dollars are not helping Buffalo much, but that's not really important for this discussion).
This really hits the head of so many nails. Similar to you I think I grew up in deep north. Our generation can not subside in the economy of factories and Timber Mills.
Most of the jobs are seasonal and pretty much all of them directly or indirectly depend on money from greater Boston area. This applies to me as well.
From my perspective the resentment stemming from a northern way of life and values changed by influx of bostonians is understandable.
Most folks moving up from Massachusetts generally don't appreciate that.
> Most of them (all the ones I know who live in MA) want to move back and really don't like the culture here but that's basically impossible do to once you've built a professional network and started to raise a family.
The people I know fled and don't regret doing so. Dueling anecdotes. Whee!
Like, for real: I grew up there, I graduated from UMaine, and among plenty of other reasons, one that is sufficiently disqualifying by itself is that there are LGBT people in my life and the people who vote for literally-drunk-at-campaign-events Paul LePage can't be trusted to not be at minimum shitty and at maximum violent towards them. To say nothing of everything else.
Rhode Island is cheap compared with Mass. Its pretty much just the Boston are that has an absurdly high cost of living at this point (Ignoring the New York parts of Connecticut)
> If you lose that reputation you will be inundated with upper-middle class Massholes fleeing the cost of living they voted into existence and they will repeat their pattern of behavior in your state
This has been the case for my entire life. It goes like clockwork; Massachusetts people retire, sell their massively overpriced homes, move up to Maine into some little town, and then immediately begin taking over town governments and fire departments and whatever other local institutions there are, piss off the local people, stir up a bunch of drama, and start introducing all the things that they hated about Methuen or Worcester.
Mills has already spent all the money and more that LePage saved, and jumpstarted the importation of refuges and asylum seekers again to the degree that Portland is busting at the seams, all in under a year. There are more than enough people already in Maine that are still living out of dirt-floor houses and scrabbling along for survival.
