Eat the Rich? The Rich Are Moving to Low-Tax States

This should be no surprise! I would move too. In a way, the "soak the rich" scheme creates unintended social engineering -- of a kind that the bureaucrats do not want.

Blurb from the Wall Street Journal article:

...from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Did the greater prosperity in low-tax states happen by chance? Is it coincidence that the two highest tax-rate states in the nation, California and New York, have the biggest fiscal holes to repair? No. Dozens of academic studies -- old and new -- have found clear and irrefutable statistical evidence that high state and local taxes repel jobs and businesses.

My super-educated, eloquent, nuanced, and highly sophisticated analysis? Well, DUH!

People are voting with their feet -- and with their moving vans.

RELATED POSTS: Andrew Lloyd Webber's commentary, and also Sir Michael Caine's.