America has always been a land made up of people on the move. The Native Americans likely migrated across the Bering Land Bridge before the end of the Ice Age, while Western European migrants came in search of liberty and wealth, and African American migrants were forcibly relocated. The same promises of wealth and economic opportunity eventually drew Asians and Latin Americans as well.

Huge migrations also occurred within America, as people sought opportunities. There were the early moves down the Appalachians, the later moves into the Ohio Valley, and the even later mass migration across the American West, one that continued even through the Dust Bowl in the 1920s and 1930s.

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After the Civil War, enormous numbers of African Americans left the post-war South, heading to Chicago and other cities with slightly more freedom. This was a migration that reversed in the 1970s, when many headed back to the South, sick of the passive-aggressive racism and limited job opportunities in the Midwest and Northeast. The South was more friendly and affordable, and the economy was doing better.

Given Americans’ mobile history, it made perfect sense when Ben Shapiro opined on the Triggernometry show that young people complaining about the high cost of living in New York should leave New York for more affordable environs, rather than believe that the government should just give them what them want:

The response, however, was emotional and negative, with The Young Turks exemplifying the pearl clutching (at 1:11:30), where the talking head (I don’t know her name) said that her once-poor neighborhood was now expensive, as if that rebutted Ben’s point, rather than proving it:

David Harsanyi wrote an opinion piece siding with Ben, pointing out, as I did, that the American way is to move to find affordability and opportunity. After giving examples of American mobility, he made the really important points:

Convincing people to stay in stagnant areas with limited economic opportunities or crushing costs only inhibits couples from forming larger families.

Dependency, often the other choice, is a way to destroy families, not build them.

[snip]

We all make trade-offs.

The problem with economic statists is that they think the state can, and should, provide a solution to all your problems.

Young socialists demand that the government come up with a magical formula that makes Brooklyn apartments affordable. It’s never going to happen.

I agree, but I want to add two more points. First, one of the lessons young people are taught today is that they don’t have to make trade-offs. The world owes it to them that they can have their cake and eat it, too.

That point first forced itself upon me in 2008 when Samantha Elauf, a Muslim teen who wore a hijab, was told that she couldn’t work at Abercrombie & Fitch, which banned all head coverings, no matter why a salesperson might wear one. The reason, of course, was that Abercrombie had a “look,” and that look was predicated on gorgeous, hip, young, sexy people.

The Obama EEOC took the case on Elauf’s behalf. It went all the way to the Supreme Court...and she won. Henceforth, a store that sold sex on a stick to young people was required to hire Muslims in medieval headgear.

It was no surprise to me after that when leftists insisted that all institutions must accommodate mentally ill people who claim to be members of the opposite sex. It’s not enough that, in a free country, you can be left alone to live out your fetish. Instead, you are entitled to run free in women’s prisons, take over women’s sports, and get a seat on the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women.

Society doesn’t get a say when the narcissists take the steering wheel. No wonder, then, that a generation of young people believes that the government owes them affordable housing in one of the world’s most expensive cities, along with believing that the city will keep its character rather than turning into an impoverished hellhole.

Second, unless you’re very poor or very rich, moving is prohibitively expensive for a large swath of the middle. In the old days, very few people had many possessions. In pre-modern America, they had a couple of changes of clothes for each family member, bedding, a rocking chair, a churn, a Bible, and that was it. Later, most could put their belongings in a suitcase and hop on a train, heading for a boarding house in a more affordable city.

Nowadays, though, everyone has stuff...so much stuff. And moving all that stuff is heinously expensive, as is storing it. Unless you’re very poor with no stuff or quite rich with the money to move the stuff, moving to a new city means selling or abandoning your possessions. That’s a very hard thing to ask of most people, so they’re stuck, surrounded by their beloved possessions, in a city they cannot afford.

We’ve gone from a high mobility nation to one that is static. We must change that if we’re to maintain our national dynamism, built upon capitalist foundations, even if doing so is painful.