The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
What Walz and Vance Get Wrong About Opportunity and Mobility
Walz is wrong to attack Vance for leaving home to go to Yale. Vance is wrong to support policies that would close off similar opportunities to others.
Over the last few days, Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz has repeatedly attacked his GOP opponent, J.D. Vance, for leaving home to attend Yale Law School:
"Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale," Walz said sarcastically at the rally…. Come on, that's not what middle America is," Walz continued.
The governor, in a recent interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe, expanded on that point, saying, "None of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale, and none of them went on to be venture capitalists, or whatever…."
He made much the same point in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: "I grew up in the small town of Butte, Nebraska, population 400. I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale."
There are many legitimate lines of attack against Vance, whom I am no fan of. But this isn't one of them. There's nothing wrong with leaving home in search of opportunity—including by attending an elite educational institution in another part of the country. America was built by people who "voted with their feet" for such opportunities, through both international migration and the internal kind. And such mobility doesn't somehow become wrong when "hillbillies" do it. Ironically, among the speakers preceding Walz at the DNC was former President Bill Clinton, who grew up in a poor white family in Arkansas, and (like Vance) went on to attend Georgetown and Yale Law School. Does Walz mean to suggest Clinton should have stuck to his "hilbilly" origins and stayed in Arkansas?
I have to admit I take this kind of attack somewhat personally. I too went to Yale Law School, the first person in my family to attend college in the United States. My wife grew up in the quintessential working class city of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Her parents (both public school teachers), and most of her other family members attended local colleges. But she chose to go to Dartmouth College, a more elite out-of-state institution that offered better opportunities. Doing that wasn't wrong, and certainly wasn't somehow a betrayal of her origins.
The real problem with Vance is not that he left home to go to Yale, but that he and Donald Trump support policies like severe migration restrictions and exclusionary zoning that close off such opportunities to others. I wrote about this in a previous post on Vance:
If you read [Vance's]… book, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that his life was transformed by [mobility]: leaving home to join the Marine Corps, get a college degree at Ohio State University, and eventually going to Yale, opened up opportunities that he probably would never have had if he had not left home….
In my later book Free to Move, I pointed out that Vance's story of success through domestic foot voting is also similar to that of people who transformed their lives through international migration. Almost all the standard arguments against allowing the latter also apply to the former.
Over the last several years, Vance has undergone a kind of ideological transformation, becoming a prominent advocate of the MAGA populism he previously opposed. Sadly, the policies Vance now advocates would destroy opportunities for immigrants and natives alike, and in the process make America weaker and poorer.
In addition to mass deportations and other harsh migration restrictions, Vance and Trump also support exclusionary zoning, which blocks millions of native-born Americans from moving to opportunity, including many poor whites with backgrounds similar to Vance and Walz. That not only harms those prevented from moving, but also harms American society as a whole, by slowing down innovation and economic growth.
Walz's record on such issues is less bad, but still highly equivocal. Sadly, the man is not the YIMBY some praise him for being. The Democratic ticket supports a number of dubious housing policies that, if enacted, would make the problem worse, though they also have some modestly good ones.
In sum, Walz is wrong to bash Vance for seeking opportunity by going to Yale. Vance, however, is wrong to advocate policies that would predictably close off similar opportunities for others. Both men—and their respective parties—would do well to work to empower more people to vote with their feet for better educational and job opportunities.
