Progressives keep scapegoating corporate America at their peril. Red states will be reaping the benefits for years to come.

There is a strange kind of politics taking over America’s bluest cities.

First, local officials allow crime, homelessness, taxes, failing schools, disorder, and basic government dysfunction to spiral. Then, when employers decide they have had enough, those same officials act shocked and offended.

How dare Walgreens close a store where theft and violence have made normal commerce nearly impossible?

How dare Amazon decide not to bring tens of thousands of jobs to New York after local politicians treated the company like a conquering army?

How dare Elon Musk move Tesla, SpaceX, or X operations out of California after being antagonized by the very officials who should have been grateful to have him?

How dare Ken Griffin move Citadel from Chicago to Miami after years of warning that Chicago was becoming harder to defend as a place to live, work, recruit, and invest?

At some point, the question answers itself.

Ken Griffin is not some random rich guy complaining because his taxes are too high. He is one of the most important financial figures in the country. He built Citadel into a global powerhouse. He employed people in Chicago, gave enormous sums to local institutions, and for years was one of Illinois’s most valuable taxpayers and civic donors.

And yet Chicago managed to lose him.

That should have produced a serious period of self-examination. Instead, in too many progressive circles, the response was basically: good riddance.

This is a problem.

The modern progressive movement has trained itself to see corporate America primarily as something to punish. Business owners are villains. Wealthy taxpayers are villains. Developers are villains. Landlords are villains. Police are villains. Energy companies are villains. Retail chains are villains when they stay and villains when they leave.

Everyone is guilty except the people actually running the cities.

Chicago is a perfect example. When taxes rise, crime explodes, public schools fail to teach children basic reading and math, and major companies start leaving, that is not capitalism failing. That is local government failing.

It is not mysterious. Employers need safe streets. Workers need safe commutes. Parents need decent schools. Companies need some confidence that the rules will not change every five minutes because an alderman, activist, or mayor needs a new enemy for the next press conference.

The Walgreens story captures the insanity. A store in Chicago says it cannot continue operating because theft and violence have become untenable. Instead of saying, “What have we done wrong that a pharmacy cannot safely operate in this neighborhood?” a local politician accuses Walgreens of “corporate abandonment.”

This is how you get fewer stores.

This is how you get food deserts, pharmacy deserts, job deserts, and then another round of speeches blaming corporate greed.

California has been doing this for years. It managed to chase away Elon Musk, one of the most productive industrialists in modern American history. Musk was not just making apps. He was building cars, rockets, satellites, charging networks, battery systems, and factories. The man was creating the future, and California officials still found ways to antagonize him.

Then they acted surprised when Texas started getting the benefit.

New York made the same mistake with Amazon. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive activists treated Amazon’s planned Queens headquarters as if it were a crime scene. Amazon was bringing jobs. Good jobs. Real jobs. Construction jobs, tech jobs, office jobs, service jobs, all the secondary economic activity that comes when a major employer plants a flag in a city.

New York chased it away. Northern Virginia was happy to take what New York rejected.

Now New York seems interested in repeating the same mistake with Ken Griffin. The city’s new progressive leadership has used him as a symbol of the ultra-rich who need to be taxed more. But this is exactly where progressive politics becomes self-defeating.

You can tax wealth only if the wealth stays.

You can regulate businesses only if the businesses remain.

You can demand more from employers only if employers believe your city is still worth the trouble.

People like Ken Griffin do not have to be in New York. They do not have to be in Chicago. Elon Musk did not have to stay in California. Amazon did not have to build in Queens. The Chicago Bears do not even necessarily have to stay in Chicago proper.

That is the part progressive politicians never seem to understand. They talk as if capital is captive. It is not.

Red states understand this, and they are going to benefit for years. Florida and Texas, especially, have become magnets for people and companies tired of being treated like enemies by the governments they fund. Lower taxes help, obviously. But it is more than taxes. It is attitude.

There is a difference between a city that says, “We want you here,” and a city that says, “We resent you, but please keep paying for everything.”

Ken Griffin heard the message in Chicago and left for Miami. Elon Musk heard it in California and shifted toward Texas. Amazon heard it in New York and built in Virginia instead.

Progressives can keep pretending this is all greed. They can keep talking about corporate responsibility while ignoring public responsibility. They can keep blaming employers for leaving cities where government has failed to maintain the basic conditions for employment.

But red states are not confused.

They are building the offices, collecting the taxes, welcoming the jobs, and watching blue-state politicians turn their own economic engines into political punching bags.

That is not a strategy.

It is civic self-harm.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)