“Every year, millions of Americans pack up and move from one state to another, providing unique insights into what people value when deciding where to live, work, and raise a family,” Andrey Yushkov and Katherine Loughead, senior policy analysts for the Tax Foundation, wrote last week. “The latest IRS and Census data show that people and businesses favor states with low and structurally sound tax systems, which can impact the state’s economic growth and governmental coffers.”
This may seem like a “duh” moment for many readers. All things being equal, who doesn’t prefer to live in places where politicians are less prone than the competition to pick pockets and smother progress? And for normal people, the idea that high taxes are a turn-off is common sense.
But we’re not talking about normal people; we’re talking about government officials who use their long-suffering subjects like milking cows and prefer to do so without consequences. There’s even a cottage industry of pundits—like Stanford sociologist Cristobal Young, author of The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight—who tell politicians what they want to hear.
That politicians aren’t as fooled as they pretend is obvious from the efforts of high-tax jurisdictions to penalize those who flee. In 2018, Illinois legislators passed a law to claw back tax breaks from “any recipient business that chooses to move all or part of its business operations and the jobs created by its business out-of-State.”
Hellbound and Down 