During the run-up to elections, I like to look a little deeper into the trends that seem to be driving people to the polls. For the 2026 midterms, we're told that the main issue is "affordability."
I don't disagree.
I live in a deep blue region of a blue state: New Jersey. My particular county (Camden) has been under total Democrat control for a very long time. The state itself has been under Democrat legislative control since 2001, with the governor's mansion also occupied by Democrats except during a hiatus when Republican-in-name-only Chris Christie held the office from 2009-2017. So whatever ills the state is experiencing with regard to affordability can not realistically be laid at the feet of Republicans.
The problems around affordability in NJ are Democrat-caused and Democrat-perpetuated.
Blue Jersey has been mired in an affordability crisis for decades. And under Left-Democrat rule, things are only getting worse.
Let's dig into how cost-of-living has changed in NJ, and specifically in my county, since 2010, shall we?
We'll start with the cost of energy. When elected governor in 2018, Phil Murphy touted his plan to transition NJ to 100% "clean" energy by 2050. The result of his policy has been an absolute disaster for energy affordability in NJ, as the graph below shows:
Residents of Camden County are now paying 55% more for electricity than they did in 2018. In their infinite wisdom, the voters of New Jersey decided to elect Murphy's successor, Virginia-born Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, as governor in 2025 and hand her party total control over the State House. Despite Sherrill's promises to freeze rates, residential electric bills have continued to climb into 2026.
Next, let's look at what has happened to property tax rates over the past 16 years. Have they gotten more affordable? Hardly. Instead, they continue to increase year after year. Here is a graph showing what has happened in Camden County since 2010:
The total increase is about 46% since 2010, but the slope has been getting steeper over the past eight years. At the rate things are going, by the time our mortgage is paid off, we will be paying more in property taxes alone than we paid for the entire mortgage bill (including interest, principal, and insurance in addition to property tax) in 2005.
The crazy thing is that the high property tax rates in Camden County seem almost reasonable compared to the outrageous rates paid by residents in deep blue north Jersey. For example, here is the list of average residential property tax bills in the most unaffordable north Jersey counties:
- Essex: $14,460
- Bergen: $13,992
- Morris: $12,259
- Union: $12,019
- Passaic: $11,670
Of these five counties, the Democrat party has maintained complete political control of four of them since 2015.
Of course, the affordability crisis has an over-sized impact on young people. While high property taxes are only an issue if you own property — which most young people can not afford — property values and taxes do impact rental costs. The majority of the Gen Z and younger cohort (up to 90%) are living in rental properties. How have rents been doing in Camden County? Not great, to say the least.
This graph shows an increase in rents in Camden County of over 100% since 2010, with a big piece of the increase happening after 2020. It should be pointed out that in 2019, it was estimated that about 450,000 illegal immigrants lived in the state of New Jersey. By 2024, that number had nearly doubled to about 893,000 or about 10% of the state's population. Phil Murphy declared New Jersey a "sanctuary state" in 2019. A quick review of the laws of supply and demand will reveal a key contributing factor to why rental costs have surged since 2020.
Another major driver of costs in Blue Jersey is insurance. Health, auto and homeowners insurance rates have all surged since 2010, with the rate of increase accelerating rapidly after 2021 as this graph demonstrates.
The overall increase in insurance cost since 2010 is 115%. This graph does not take into account renters insurance, but there is bad news there as well: the cost of renters insurance in NJ has surged 76% since 2010.
To repeat: all of these costs have increased dramatically during a long period of total or near total Democrat control of the state and county in question.
There's an old saw that defines insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That aphorism is a snap-shot of what is going on in Blue Jersey and every other blue state. Blue state voters keep electing the same Democrats who have made their states unaffordable and are now surprised that their own children can not afford to live in the states where they were born and raised.
I hope that reasonable people of good sense in Democrat-dominated states will look at this data and realize that continuing to vote for Democrats will never break this cycle. Indeed, given what the Democrat party is fast becoming, electing them will only exacerbate the affordability crisis.
The ideology underpinning the political Left (big government solutions, more and higher taxes, higher fees and tolls, high-density housing mandates, government control of rents, insurance, electric rates, creating programs that encourage and enable fraud, flaunting of federal immigration laws, discouraging law and order, etc.) are the problem. Elected representatives who endorse and embrace these ideas and despise the free market and law enforcement will never be able to mitigate, let alone lower, the rising cost of living.
When the older generations in blue states perpetuate this destructive pattern of one-party Democrat rule, it virtually ensures that their Social Security, pensions, and retirement plans will not be able to keep pace with rapidly rising costs. And worse, their children and grandchildren will not be able to afford to live nearby.
Think carefully about this when you enter the voting booth. None of this happened by accident. If you have been helping to elect Democrats, you literally voted for it.
In closing, let me quote another old aphorism: "If you encourage bad behavior, you are guaranteed to get more of it."
Nothing will ever change in a Blue State as long as the majority of voters are programmed to vote for Democrats.
(Note: Stats and graphs in this post were generated with the assistance of Gemini AI. I invite you to verify them for yourself.)
No comments:
Post a Comment