NEW U.S. CENSUS Bureau figures show Rhode Island losing population for the third straight year. Experts point to what common sense would suggest: Young, college-educated people — the backbone of any state — are fleeing for job opportunities elsewhere. High taxes and poor government services starve the state’s economy, and give people less incentive to live here.

That’s a scary trend, University of Rhode Island economist Leonard Lardaro told The Journal’s Mark Arsenault (“R.I. exodus: Losing the young, ambitious,” news, Jan. 2). Educated people of working age are key to attracting high-tech companies, which will be crucial to having good-paying jobs here.

Young and educated people, of course, also provide the tax revenues that keep government going, and they serve as the parents and informed voters (and, I might add, newspaper readers) who pressure the government to be better. They are a vital ingredient of a strong civic culture.

In Rhode Island’s case, the cost of driving them out is exacerbated by drawing in the region’s poor, and poorly educated, who quite rationally come here for generous social-welfare programs, especially for their children. However commendable those programs are, pushing out the independent middle class and pulling in the dependent poor is a straight path to economic suicide for any state.

If many Rhode Islanders are alarmed about this, though, it’s not readily apparent. The voters keep sending the same politicians to office to perpetuate the policies that are fueling this trend. Even Governor Carcieri, who sometimes challenges how things are done in Rhode Island, is so blasé that his office questioned the validity of the census numbers!

It’s not just the young. Retirees are fleeing the state in droves, taking their brains, civic involvement and tax dollars with them. One, former state Rep. Jim Davey (R.-Cranston), just wrote a very interesting letter to the editor.

Mr. Davey, an outstanding public servant who worked for U.S. District Judge John Sirica during the Watergate cover-up trial of Richard Nixon’s aides, now resides in the town of Cary, in the heart of the Triangle high-tech area of North Carolina. Like many people who still love Rhode Island but had to exercise reason in their choice of a home, he follows his former state’s political an-tics on projo.com.

He noticed that, in a Jan. 3 story, Cranston Fire Chief Richard Delgado complained about a proposed cut of 5 percent in all city department budgets. “It’d be very difficult. We’re down to bare bones,” the chief said.

Mr. Davey suggested that the chief consult with the leaders in his new town. Cary has a population of 110,000 — well above Cranston’s 80,000 — yet Cary’s Fire Department budget is 60 percent lower than Cranston’s! And Cary, with a population one-third larger, gets by with 25 percent fewer firefighters.

Similarly, police and animal-control costs in Cary are 15 percent lower. Yet Cary was rated one of the 10 safest cities in America for six years in a row, Mr. Davey writes.

Now, multiply Cranston by every community in Rhode Island.

Which state is more interested in serving the common interest, rather than the special interests? Which state is drawing in the middle class? Which is losing middle-class taxpayers? Which state is creating more jobs? Which is attracting more tax-paying retirees?

One doesn’t require an advanced degree in economics to answer those questions.

The problem with Rhode Island government has never been a lack of tax dollars. It’s governance. Until the state is better governed, its middle-class citizens will confront strong incentives to leave, in spite of all the things they love about this delightful and beautiful state.

Yet the same politicians keep winning re-election. To be sure, they and their special-interest sponsors do a first-rate job of manipulating the political process, but the voters are ultimately responsible. And they seem happy with dismal job growth, poor public schools, government corruption, middle-class flight and sky-high property taxes. Go figure.

The only check on all of this seems to be the iron law of economics. People do vote with their feet as well as at the ballot box.

However much our politicians may wish to postone the day of reckoning, they are about to be mugged by reality. Thanks to the hollowing out of its tax base, Rhode Island now faces some severe budget problems — huge structural deficits, with little opportunity to tax its way out of them, since higher taxes would only hasten middle-class flight and further shrink tax revenues. That means that the Ocean State may have to adjust, in spite of itself, by trimming its public-employee costs, reforming its social-welfare programs, improving its public schools and building an enonomy.

Otherwise, one dark day the pension checks for Rhode Island’s retired teachers and state and local government employees could stop flowing to Florida and the other hospitable states to which they have fled.

Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor ( eachorn@projo.com).