High Taxes Redistribute People, NOT Income
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
From UHaul.com:
One-way truck rental from Newark to Charlotte : $2,116
One-way truck rental from Charlotte to Newark: $311
Reason: New Jersey is one of the top five departure states, and North Carolina is one of the top five destination states (see chart above), and the almost 7:1 ratio in prices suggests that 7 times as many trucks are going from NJ-NC as are going from NC-NJ.
From today’s WSJ:
A record eight million Americans — some 20,000 people every day — relocated to another state last year. So where are these families headed and why? The general picture is this: Americans are continuing to flee the Northeast and Midwest, while the leading destinations continue to be Southern and Western states.
The United Van Lines study finds that the biggest population loser last year was Michigan, where two families moved out of the state for every new family that moved in. Americans are also fleeing New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois. Without interviewing the departed, it’s impossible to know the reasons for this outward migration. No doubt overall economic prospects, climate, quality of life and housing prices play a role. But one reason to conclude that taxes are also a motivator is because the eight states without an income tax are stealing talent from other states.
Our friends on the left say Americans are willing to pay more taxes to get better government services, but their migration patterns reveal the opposite. Governors would be wise to heed these interstate migration trends as they try to cope with what may be one of the worst years in recent memory for state finances. The people who tend to be the most mobile in American society are the educated and motivated — in other words, the taxpaying class. Tax them too much, and you’ll soon find they aren’t there to tax at all.
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