Voting with Their Feet: Vermont, Iowa, New Jersey, and California Editions
Steve Forbes, in an unfortunately subscription-only item, notes that there are consequences of taxaholism.
Four examples can be seen in Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey (coming soon), and California. And of course, as Forbes notes, The New York Times dares not recognize the real problem:
Two recent newspaper stories underscored a problem several states are experiencing–stagnant or falling populations. The New York Times ran a piece about young people fleeing the Green Mountain State of Vermont for greener pastures, citing the lack of job opportunities. Around the same time, the Des Moines Register ran a special section on Iowa’s population problem. A century ago the Hawkeye State was home to 3% of the U.S. population; today it’s home to just 1%. Young people have been leaving in droves for decades. Both stories cited experts and politicians who offered up various solutions to stem the tide, yet both papers ignored the proverbial elephant in the room: taxes. These two states are punishers when it comes to laying levies on income. In Iowa the top income tax rate is nearly 9%, one of the highest in the country. In Vermont it’s even worse, 9.5%.
Iowa and Vermont should be experiencing population booms. Thanks to high tech, folks today literally have the world at their fingertips, no matter where their feet are planted.
….. New Jersey is in the process of emulating Vermont and New York in crushing its citizens with onerous exactions. The state’s property taxes are about the highest in the country, and new governor and wannabe President Jon Corzine is poised to make the burden heavier.
Whoever thought the day would come that California–highly taxed and antibusiness–would start seeing tens of thousands of native-born Americans moving out of the state instead of moving in. For the first time since becoming a state 155 years ago, California will not gain, and may actually lose, congressional representation after the 2010 census.
Bottom line: Taxes matter, not only on the federal level but also on the state and local levels.
UPDATE: OpinionJournal.com rips into Corzine’s broken promises, and asks a legitimate question, after providing examples, which is why any Democrat who promises tax reductions should be believed. Based on sad experience in Ohio, I would expand the scope of that question to “almost all politicians.”
