As Rush would say, “See, I Told You So“:
This year, the deep pockets of New York’s rich were tapped like never before. The state’s wealthiest pay new higher income tax rates, higher taxes for limousines and yachts, more to enter a horse in a race and more to dabble in real estate.
Meanwhile, many are losing millions from the closing of business tax loopholes and those making over $1 million are losing tax deductions others get.
Now, early revenue figures suggest that taxing the wealthy more under this year’s state budget may have driven away richer New Yorkers. That could make the economic comeback for the state even harder.
“You heard the mantra, ‘Tax the rich, tax the rich,’ ” Gov. David Paterson said Wednesday at a gathering of newspaper editors at an Associated Press event in Syracuse. “We’ve done that. We’ve probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state.”
“People aren’t wedded to a geographic place as they once were. It’s a different world,” New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch said.
To quote an old cliche, “reality bites.” I’m perpetually dumbfounded by the fact that liberals, with all their high-dollar Ivy League schooling, frou-frou intellectualism, and supposed concern for the least among us, still can’t grasp one of the most fundamental principles of economics — when you want to punish an activity or a group of people, you levy taxes. Taxes are burdensome, not liberating. They slow down economies, rather than stimulate them.
And because we live in a free country, where people cannot be forced by law to reside in a certain municipality, a lot of New Yorkers seem to be voting with their feet. An exodus of talented, financially successful people is exactly the opposite of what New York needs right now, but will the state’s deeply entrenched liberal government even consider lowering state tax rates in order to spur real economic growth?
A few months ago I noted that New York State seemed “stuck in a downward spiral,” with a wobbly economy that is slowly forcing its working class citizens to become more and more dependent on government programs funded by high taxes that, in turn, slow down the economy even more.
But if your idyllic solution to the world’s problems is centered around the redistribution, rather than the creation, of wealth, then I guess economics is little more than a bothersome distraction.
Oh, and New Yorkers — wait ’till the ObamaCare taxes kick in.
Hope-n-ChangeTM anyone?
