UPDATE: Welcome readers from Pursuing Holiness! Thanks for the link, Laura! Laura knows about this from experience – she runs her own information technology business, and is scaling it back. Go read her post, too!
A few days back, I posted on the Cato Institute’s story about the New York businessman who shifted his residence to Florida to avoid paying confiscatory tax rates to the greedy socialists in Albany.
Well, that’s not the only place where this is happening. There is a reason why freedom-hating atheists had to build Gulags and walls to keep people from escaping their communist prison. When tax rates go up, the most productive citizens either stop working or they leave entirely!
Here is a story from the UK Times Online about the exodus of British taxpayers from Gordon Brown’s corrupt socialist regime.
Excerpt:
SOL ZAKAY, the billionaire property tycoon, is the latest entrepreneur to quit Britain after the introduction of a 50% tax rate on high earners.
…Zakay joins a growing list of businessmen and City financiers disenchanted at the new tax rate as well as the proposed changes to EU regulation of private-equity and hedge funds.
And here is a story from the Wall Street Journal about Maryland taxpayers fleeing their left-wing state’s tax hikes.
Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were “willing and able to pay their fair share.” The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would “grin and bear it.”
One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.
When the most productive taxpayers stop producing, they take your jobs with them. It’s called the Laffer curve. Maybe you progressives should read about it. Think about the way the world actually works in reality. And then ask yourself a very important question. A question that you never heard answered in Harvard Law School.
Who is John Galt?
UPDATE: Hot Air notes that IRS revenues are dropping rapidly. Gateway Pundit adds: 16K jobs lost PER DAY since stimulus passed. Gateway Pundit reports Democrats consider national sales tax (hurts the poor disproportionately, just like cap and trade), and China has warned democrats about printing more money.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I guess the west is thinking, eventually, where will they go? If we all turn socialist, they will have to goto the third world or pay their socialist dues…they don’t stop and think that they will just stop innovating (or avoid taxes).
But I also think this gets back to the borrow and spend ways of the republicans that started with Reagan and exploded under Bush Jr – if you put the government so far into hock there’s no way out, you either have to stop spending (which neither side will consider) or raise taxes (again, they never think about cutting spending).
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Please see this link that shows the Bush deficits compared to Obama.
The cost of the Iraq war under Bush was about 600 billion. Obama spent 2 trillion on golf carts, etc.
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Jesus Jerry, are you back to regale us w/ yet more hard-leftist links about how Reagan and co. set us on this course while, at the same time, ignoring FDR (which is where it actually started) and LBJ?
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I did a speech on the Laffer curve back in college (25 years ago!). It went over well, and it is still true.
The politicans are always surprised by the law of unintended consequences. “Gee, I never thought anyone would change behavior when I raised their taxes sky high.”
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ECM,
Here is some nice reading for you:
http://www.libertyunbound.com/archive/2004_11/bradford-spending.html
http://thepoliticsofdebt.com/?p=177
I know, the new york times, but they have good figures. As you can see, your claim against FDR has very little teeth. Our current climate of debt has been fostered exclusively by the right, and no one else. Unfortunately, it looks like Obama is about to change that radically.
The first two posts give very good break-downs of high spenders like your beloved Reagan. The funny thing is, I have no doubt that if these were democrats, then the reds would be shouting these figures from the roof tops. But honestly ECM, you need to at least read a little before spreading your FUD!
Jerry
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Ooops, leave Reagan out of this.
Regarding your 3 sources, we have two uncredentialed no-name web sites, and an op-ed in the communist NYT. Please try not cite blogs and left-wing op-eds in order to find people who agree with you. Instead, try seeking out neutral sources, peer-reviewed publications, and academic debates.
The libertarian Cato Institute is authoritative, unlike the 3 hard-left partisans you cited.
They write:
Defense spending should not be counted, as this is the proper function of government. So Reagan is nothing like Bush, and Republicans are the party of Reagan, not Bush.
So, Jerry, you’re wrong on Reagan, but right about Bush’s spending. But you forgot about revenues, which skyrocketed as a result of Bush’s 2-trillion dollars of tax cuts. When you look at the budget deficit graph that I sent you before, you’ll note that up until the 2008 Community Reinvestment Act crisis, which was caused by the Democrats, Bush was SHRINKING THE DEFICIT FOR SEVERAL YEARS. The deficit was getting SMALLER, year-over-year.
The only thing that threw Bush off was the 2008 Democrat-caused housing crisis, which Bush tried to stop (according to the NYT) in 2003. He was blocked by Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and the other Democrats. Did you watch all those videos of the Democrats obstructing Republican efforts to regulate the GSEs?
One more thing. Before the election, and Obama’s 2 trillion dollar budget deficit this year alone, I urged you to read David Freddoso’s book on Obama. You didn’t. Then I urged you to look at Obama’s voting record. You didn’t. You voted in a socialist, and perhaps even a communist. Everyone who cared about knowing the truth knew. But you didn’t know. You own these trillion dollar deficits. You are an exponentially bigger spender than Bush. You own Barack Obama’s socialism now. Every stupid thing he does, you voted for. You own it. It’s a reflection of YOUR judgment – the way YOU make decisions.
ECM, over to you. When you’re done, we’ll post it as a feature!
And if Jerry is VERY NICE, maybe we’ll give him the last word. Maybe.
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I realize that they are “uncredentialed”, but the second one has some great comments that lean both right and left. I have some great sources for the “spendiness” of the reds, but unfortunately it’s on my work computer.
I’m not wrong about Reagan – you just believe that because he was spending on defense that overspending was acceptable. I’m extremely fiscally conservative. There was no war going on (I know the cold war, whatever) that would warrant that type of build-up and that amount of spending. He brought us close to a 600 ship navy only to have most of those ships moth-balled – a huge waste.
Even Bush Sr. greatly increased our national debt – again, horrible with the check-book.
You can’t even prove the CRA caused the housing mess. You’re trying to say that the CRA explicitly said you must give huge sums of money to people with bad credit and no jobs? I ended up firing my first real-estate agent because she got mad at me because I said 5 years ago we were heading for trouble because you can only sell so many $300K houses to $50K a year couples. I’ve read a good 80% of the CRA and it said nothing about throwing common sense out the window. Here is a link based on an op-ed about comments from a nobel laureate and he bashes both sides:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26430979/obamas_bailout
I’ll leave it at this since I guess I’m starting to diverge from the topic of the post.
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OK, and with that citation of a Paul Krugman opinion-editorial from the non-partisan, highly-respected, academically-grounded, peer-reviewed Rolling Stone magazine, we are DONE. ECM, you get the last word, and then we post the whole thing. If Neil Simpson gets 300 comments for his debate on Catholicism, then I should be able to get 50 comments on this series.
I got to ask you, dude. Do you know who Paul Krugman is? I mean… do you? Maybe ECM will tell you what Krugman thought of Obama’s stimulus. And remember, it’s YOUR stimulus. You voted for it, too.
By the way, that phrase you keep using… “fiscal conservative”. I do not think it means what you think it means.
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He’s still a nobel laureate, whether you like it or not (and I know you don’t). I read the articles, do some research and then base my opinions off of that. Anyone with a brain (and I’m not even remotely claiming that you don’t have one) should be able to do some critical thinking. In one of my economics classes I wrote a paper that mirrored what an economist later won a nobel prize for – so it doesn’t take a huge amount of research to understand these concepts.
You do know that most of Einstein’s (sp?) early papers had no references or anything official (I’m not trying to compar myself to him) – so to discount something because it doesn’t meet your standards doesn’t mean that it has no merit. I do have access to the journals, but they’re mostly restricted to the medical and physical sciences, and to be a bit repetitive, he’s a nobel laureate in this very subject.
I’ve also sent you articles about peer-reviewed journals – there are too many for them to all be high quality. On top of that we have “peer” reviewed journals for garbage like philosophy and religion as if peer-reviewing “feelings” makes them worthy of reading (but I still read them).
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