Massachusetts’s coming economic explosion and the American pursuit of happiness

By Andrea Widburg

The state of Massachusetts, which is one of the most hardcore Democrat states in America, is in deep financial trouble. It turns out that giving unlimited benefits to illegal aliens isn’t a recipe for economic success. That this should happen to a state drowning in colleges and universities is significant because it’s a reminder of how erroneously our elites have been interpreting “the pursuit of Happiness,” that inherent right God gave all humans.

I’ll start with the grim economic news:

A Boston-based think tank says the state economy is crashing as the Massachusetts population records “historically high” gains in “low-skilled migrants, many lacking legal status” while domestic residents flee.

The Pioneer Institute has warned state officials to be wary when looking at last year’s Census Bureau estimates that showed Massachusetts’ population had its largest growth in over half a century.

[snip]

Massachusetts gained 69,603 residents between 2023 and 2024, but an “astounding” 90,217 international migrants helped offset a “loss” of 27,480 domestic residents, according to Census estimates. The figures also include a gain of 6,718 residents from natural population changes, in births and deaths.

In other words, Massachusetts lost 27,480 presumably gainfully employed legal residents and replaced them with 90,217 mostly illegal aliens. Massachusetts, of course, which is immured in its self-righteous leftism, has been extraordinarily generous to illegal aliens:

Massachusetts has experienced a spike in the number of migrants arriving from other countries over the past year, a situation that has strained state resources and is set to cost taxpayers over $1 billion during each of the next several fiscal years.

[snip]

State budget writers reported spending $858 million on the state-run shelter system in fiscal year 2024 and costs in fiscal year 2025 are expected to exceed $1 billion.

If you build a welfare system for illegal aliens, they will come...in droves. No wonder tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents voted with their feet.

So, that’s the news. But what about my historical and philosophical point?

Well, Massachusetts has the honor of having more than 100 colleges and universities. Some of them are pretty well-known, having once actually educated young people: Harvard, MIT, Brandeis, Boston University, Williams, Amherst, etc.

It used to be that if you said you were a graduate of one of those institutions, people would be impressed. Now, though, those paying attention to the state of higher education in America will be inclined to assume that you’re a nodcock, completely indoctrinated in the full panoply of leftist ideology: climate change insanity, gender madness, antisemitism, hostility to Biblical principles, support for terrorism, racial hysteria, etc.

Oh, and we’ll also assume you’re incredibly arrogant. You believe that your degrees mean you’re knowledgeable, whereas we know, as noted, that you’re merely credentialed. Until proven otherwise (see, e.g., Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, JD Vance), you’re indoctrinated, not wise.

“Wise” is very important. Some of the smartest, most credentialed people lack even a scintilla of wisdom. Wisdom means recognizing hard facts, a few of which include:

that leftist ideologies (Big government, anti-religion) have consistently failed, no matter where tried;
that a government that takes weapons from law-abiding citizens often follows that with large-scale massacres;
that biology makes it undeniable that a life is created at the moment of conception;
that a society that is Balkanized into factions trained to believe that the pie is finite and they are perpetually at the mercy of the “other” is a society that will disintegrate into squalor and war;
that a nation cannot simultaneously have open borders and welfare;
that there are only two sexes; and
that girls lose when boys compete directly against them in physical contests.

All of that reality-based knowledge has been trained out the highly credentialed solons who run America’s most leftist states. If you cannot operate from reality, you will destroy things.

And here’s something I bet very few of you know. I didn’t until yesterday when an erudite friend informed me of this fact: When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he didn’t mean “Happiness” as we understand it today.

Today, “happiness” means to be “happy,” and to be “happy” means “delighted, pleased, or glad as over a particular thing,” or “characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy.” If we were to write the Declaration of Independence today, we’d say that among our “unalienable Rights” are “Life, Liberty, and the freedom to follow our bliss.”

But that’s not what the Founders meant. When they spoke of “happiness,” they meant “virtue.” According to Jeffrey Rosen, the Founders defined “happiness” as did the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers.

It had nothing to do with emotional bliss—and the graduates of today’s institutions wallow in emotion. Instead, happiness was a lifelong process, during which one worked toward self-mastery, industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity—in sum, virtue based upon wise choices as a pathway to happiness. People who hadn’t mastered these essential ideas and behaviors were unfit for self-governance.

It says something profound about America in 2025 that the most credentialed people in America have utterly abandoned the Founders’ reality- and morally-based idea of disaster—and, in so doing, are driving their state, one of the most important states behind America’s founding, to collapse.