Residents of high-tax states are voting with their feet
By Stephen Moore – – Sunday, April 12, 2015
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren appeared on one of the late night talk shows last week, beating the class warfare drum and arguing for billions of dollars in new social programs paid for with higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. In recent years, though, blue states such as California, Illinois, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland and Minnesota adopted this very strategy, and they raised taxes on their wealthy residents. How did it work out? Almost all of these states lag behind the national average in growth of jobs and incomes.
So, if income redistribution policies are the solution to shrinking the gap between rich and poor, why do they fail so miserably in the states?
The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.
California is the prototypical example. It has the highest tax rates of any state. It has very generous welfare benefits. Many of its cities have a high minimum wage. But day after day, the middle class keeps leaving. The wealthy areas such as San Francisco and the Silicon Valley boom. Yet the state has nearly the highest poverty rate in the nation. The Golden State, alas, has become the inequality state.
Right to work states vs. states where they tax you to death to pay for excessive pension and healthcare benefits for a bunch of 50 year olds… NJ union thugs are stealing food from our tables.
I had thought that I would move to another part of NJ. Lately it seems that I should leave the stste. They tax you when you earn it and they tax it again when you die.
Stealing food from our table as you live in your million dollar house plus. Maybe you just can’t afford to live in Ridgewood. Try Midland Park. With the money you save moving there you can afford to eat good and renew your Ridgewood County Club membership.