GUARANTEED FAILURE: Raising State Taxes

California, Illinois, Connecticut, Michigan, Minnesota, and other states are in serious financial difficulty because of profligate spending. Their "leaders" have the idea that they can solve their financial woes simply by taxing the higher income people of their states.

This is doomed to failure and is simply "spread-the-wealth" stupidity--failed socialism thinking. Perhaps it is unfortunate but there is no law against stupidity.

"Economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore said that many state governors are embracing a losing strategy — soaking the rich."

In his article at moneynews.com, Gene J. Koprowski points out that,

"New Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn wants a 50 percent increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy because this is the 'fair' way to close his state's gaping deficit," the economists write in The Wall Street Journal.

Gov. Quinn and other tax-obsessed governors have been empowered by recent studies by left-wing groups like the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities that suggest that tax increases, particularly tax increases on higher-income families, may be the best available option, to balance state budgets.

"Here's the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states," write Laffer and Moore.

In the last 11 years 1,100 every day of the year on average have moved from high-tax states primarily to the states with no income tax--mainly Texas, Florida, Nevada, and Tennessee. The political leaders of high-tax states cannot put fences around their states to force their citizens to remain inside their borders as did the old Soviet Union.

Such policies will drive the most productive people AND their money out of the taxing states to those who allow more economic freedom. Nor was Rush Limbaugh first nor the last New Yorker to leave for Florida, and the higher the tax differentials, the greater the rush out of those states, and the greater the prosperity in the low-tax states.

Not only will they take themselves and their money out, but also the jobs they create and support.

Think not? Read the whole story here.