1. No state in the US has politically powerful unions, public or private. They're mostly in the employers' pockets and keep making concession after concession. Not to mention being in the pocket of the democratic party, for years already; and failing to participate in solidarity struggles by one union for another; and essentially shutting down their own strikes despite the members' sentiments, etc. etc.

2. Very few data points, no trends over time, no examination of other causes of population flows etc.

My conclusion: This is a pro-corporate propaganda piece: They want low/no taxes and an even more maleable and precarious workforce.

Sounds like standard pro-corporate propaganda.

This opinion piece overstates its case. NC has a flat 5.25% income tax. Alaska has no income tax. Yet NC is growing and Alaska shrinking. There’s a lot more going on with where people choose to live than just tax rates.

The Economist did a special report last year comparing Texas and California, looking at a lot more than just tax rates. They are the two largest states facing many similar problems with very different approaches.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/06/20/texafornia-drea...

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/06/20/californ...

Just moved from CA to CO. 7.25 to 4.6 ... Not a massive change mind you but I'll take it.

The main problem with CA are the "hidden" taxes WRT quality of life. Real estate prices being insane. Serious homeless problems in SF. Smoke from all the fires. PG&E being evil, etc.

People who do these stats should see where the investment is for people who left.

1. Are they moving to Florida to take advantage of a tax shelter alone or have they also sold off any NY/California real estate. That is, people move for strategic reasons even if they believe in California/NY

2. Young people vs Retirement - retiring to Florida is not a new thing.

3. Wouldn’t you want old people to move away from high cost cities so young can move in?

One of the most direct examples of this for the HN demographic is the migration of tech workers from San Francisco to Seattle, which has similar wages but no income taxes and no capital gains taxes. That saves tens of thousands of dollars per year on income tax alone. It isn't a secret that of the two big factors incentivizing people to move to Seattle from San Francisco, one of them is the substantially reduced tax incidence (the other factor being quality of life).

There is definitely a threshold where people start arbitraging tax differences between States, though it doesn't happen often because demographic and lifestyle preference dimensions also factor heavily. The partial de-correlation between tax policy and predominant demographics/lifestyle in recent years, combined with relentless tax increases in some jurisdictions, has created an environment ripe for tax arbitrage.

If you have a very small percent of your population pay an ever increasing share of the tax burden, it’s quite easy for them to avoid it (move to Florida). This problem has hit NY and Connecticut especially hard. Here is a story from 2016 of how a single resident moving from New Jersey put the entire state’s budget at risk https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer...

The truth is that if you want to dramatically increase taxes collected, you need a broad-based tax that hits the middle class. But the middle class hates taxes as much as everyone else! And therein lies the problem for politicians. They can continue to bash the rich, but when push comes to shove soaking them won’t solve the problem. Seizing all of Bill Gates money will only fund the federal deficit (over $1 trillion this year alone) for a few months. And then what to do?

One enormous, immoral handout to the middle class is the mortgage interest tax deduction and the fixed-rate 30 year mortgage which are simply subsidized handouts to people well-off enough to purchase property. People have come to think this is a right, when in reality all taxpayers are handing over money to those rich enough to purchase property. Only the USA has the fixed-rate mortgage because it’s bad business for banks. Eliminating this would be a much more economically logical way to increase the tax take than soaking the rich, but I guarantee there is 0% chance of this happening because, again, no one likes paying taxes!

It's a little flimsy to ascribe causality in the headline

In case of paywall:

* https://archive.is/Mra7Q

Relevant: https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-millenn...

> When tax rates are not explicit, millennials say they'd prefer larger government offering more services (54 percent) to smaller government offering fewer services (43 percent). However when larger government offering more services is described as requiring high taxes, support flips and 57 percent of millennials opt for smaller government with fewer services and low taxes, while 41 percent prefer large government.

As they should be. California has perhaps gone as far as it can go, and one wonders when the rubber band is going to snap back so that the place becomes friendlier to workers and business.