Tag: income tax

More taxpayers voting with their feet.

John Fund of NRO:

The numbers are clear. Between 1995 and 2010 over $2 trillion in adjusted gross income moved between the states. That’s the equivalent of the GDP of California, the ninth largest GDP in the world. Some of the movement might be due to weather — that helps to explain some of Florida’s $86.4 billion gain and New York’s $58.6 billion loss. But we can attribute a great deal to the fact that capital flows to where it is best treated. Travis Brown, author of the new book How Money Walks, reports that the nine states without a personal income tax gained $146 billion in new wealth while the nine states with the highest income tax rates lost $107 billion.

This is the point where people in the states getting the influx start muttering that the people fleeing from high-tax states often bring bad fiscal habits and ways of thinking with them, and that’s a legitimate point. On the other hand, at least some of those people are moving precisely because they want to get away from the aforementioned bad habits; besides, this isn’t Soviet Russia. People are allowed to move: actually, they can just move, and there’s nothing ‘allowed’ about it. So I suggest a careful program of acquainting new residents in the joys of a relatively smaller-government way of life…
Continue reading More taxpayers voting with their feet.

NH Ways & Means chair Susan Almy thinks you’re dumb.

That’s the only conclusion that I can come to after reading this eyebrow-raiser of a quote.  The context: the Democrat-controlled New Hampshire legislature is bringing in a pro-income tax group called ITEP to a summit/seminar (the rhetoric keeps changing), and state W&M chair Rep Almy is upset at all the shadowy conspiracies arrayed against said group.  Well, she assumes that there are shadowy conspiracies; since her side has them (Tides Foundation, Soros, ACORN), then so must the other.  In the process of mangling even the popular perception of the McCarthy era, Almy tosses off this whopper:

“I have even had people emailing to yell at me for supporting a sales tax, which I have never done – I simply invited a respected state economist in to talk to us about why an income tax was bad for business, and he said we should consider a sales tax instead.”

Let me change some phrases around to highlight the absurdity of that statement:

“I have even had people emailing to yell at me for supporting eating puppies, which I have never done – I simply invited a respected state economist in to talk to us about why eating kittens was bad for business, and he said we should consider eating puppies instead.”

You don’t invite in a puppy-eater to talk to you unless you’re at least receptive to the idea of eating puppies. And if you’ve truly ‘never’ supported sales taxes, it seems just a bit odd to be this upset when people point out that your actions contradict you – particularly when your own comments don’t distinguish between your own opinions, and those of ‘a respected state economist.’  I find it difficult to believe that she didn’t notice the tacit admission in her own statement; I suspect that she did, and simply assumed that none of her opponents would be bright enough to do the same*.

On the bright side: even if she is playing conspiracy theorist, at least she hasn’t dragged in the Jews somehow.  That’s something, at least.

Moe Lane

*This is a fortunately common delusion on the Other Side.

Crossposted to RedState.