Mobile Americans

As a grad student and teacher, I studied a lot of U.S. history, culture, and politics. And while I’m no longer in the teaching business, I like reading and listening to podcasts about some of the things that make living in the U.S. somewhat unique compared to the rest of the world.

One of the unique features of American culture is how mobile we are. In that, we move a lot. More than folks in other countries. When I say move, I’m talking about packing up a van and moving to another town, city, or state.

To illustrate how mobile American are/were, there was a interesting podcast episode on Radio Atlantic (an odd choice for a name because I’m not sure if this podcast is from a radio broadcast or they just like the sound of “Radio Atlantic) on February 20th, 2025 called “Americans Are Stuck. Who’s to Blame?” Host Hanna Rosin interviewed author Yoni Appelbaum about his book, Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity. You can read a shortened version of the book in The Atlantic’s March issue (steal it where you get your free content). Appelbaum contends that “Moving Day,” in which roughly a third of a city’s population would pack up their belongings and move at the end of the month to another place, was a real thing in the 19th century. But it’s still a thing – though not as epic as it was in the 19th century. After all, how many times do you see an uptick in U-Haul or Ryder trucks on the road around the end of the month?

I was thinking about how much I used to move both as a kid and a young adult. My family immigrated to the U.S. via Canada in the mid-’60s when the immigration laws in the U.S. changed. Once in the U.S., I can count seven moves as a child. As a young adult, it was also seven moves. 14 times I’ve been part of a Moving Day experience. Now? Well, we’ve been living in the same home for almost 27 years. Did we want to move in that 27 years? Absolutely. But it didn’t happen because of a little thing called The Great Recession. To say we’ve felt kind of stuck is an understatement. However, because of the current political and cultural climate in the U.S., there’s a real strong sense that we don’t want to live anywhere else but the state we live in. Even then, there are only so many places we’d consider moving to in The Golden State.

American culture is a lot of things (and ever-evolving) but the sense of wanting to experience a different locale for a time is a fairly common feature of the culture. Even now, younger folks who want to have a “city” experience are moving to cities like New York, L.A. or even D.C. because they crave a dynamic culture where they can meet people in an environment that feels new and exciting. The fact that San Francisco is no longer that place is surprising to me.

The above is a poll that was taken by the San Francisco Chronicle on March 9th (2025) and what made me kind of chuckle is that a decade ago, 20-somethings were flocking to the City by the Bay because it was the hot new club. But the 20-somethings then mostly worked in tech, wanted to come to the Bay Area to make money, have some uniquely San Francisco experiences, and then eventually go home with a wad of cash and some good memories. In the process, they (the beige tech bros and tech gals) changed The City from what made it unique in terms of creativity, personal liberties, and sophistication into a boring company town. And now, 20-somethings of today look at what folks 10 years (and older) than they are have wrought and are saying “No thanks, SF. You’re too expensive and too boring.” I can relate. The city that I loved, and yes the one that I got to experience when I was in my 20s, is no more. That era is just a memory, or whatever is left of that culture exists in the margins. It’s sad to me because ever since I was a kid, I loved San Francisco for all the things that made it unique — which is why I wanted to live there. I feel lucky that I was able to for five years. Would I like to live there now? In a way, yes. But it would be where the olds live — like The Sunset District or the Inner Richmond.

But, baring that I somehow come into million and millions of dollars (i.e., winning the lottery), it’ll never happen. The reason is simple: real estate in San Francisco is for the wealthy, the lucky, and those who stand to inherit their parent’s home. What about other places in California? Well, most of the places that are desirable to me are financially out of reach. Plus, with the new climate we live in, fires, rising sea levels, and extreme heat make those Goldilocks Zones few and far between. Even if, like Ezra Klein* desires, that we start building more housing, it’s going to take decades for the supply to meet the demand in such a way that housing becomes more affordable, and people start being mobile again.

Perhaps I better get used to being stuck.

*To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next gener­ation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.

Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and pre­serves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.