One of the great conceits of the “elite” left – led, in Minnesota, by the Star Tribune’s insufferable editorial board – is that if Minnesota’s taxpayers don’t pony up to pay for a “better Minnesota” – the “high tax, high service” state model – we’ll be a “cold Omaha”.
Voters around the country are saying back – “If it gets us away from you and your moronic, childish policies, Omaha’s not so bad”.
The LATimes notes that voters are making that exact choice with their feet:
In America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.
It’s not surprising, then, that there’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.
The article compares Cali to Texas – but it could just as easily apply to high-tax/high-“service” Minnesota and some of its neighbors:
California and Texas are not perfect representatives of the alternative deals, but they come close. Overall, the Census Bureau’s latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. Only three states and the District of Columbia saw higher per capita government outlays than California, while those expenditures in Texas were lower than in all but seven states. California ranked 10th in overall taxes levied by state and local governments, on a per capita basis, while Texas, one of only seven states with no individual income tax, was 38th.
So people in San Francisco tell each other that if they don’t fund every single thing their public employees and special interests want, they’ll become a “cold Austin?”
Did I say “moving with their feet?”
One way to assess how Americans feel about the different tax and benefit packages the states offer is by examining internal U.S. migration patterns. Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau. Over the same period, Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 as a result of people moving in from other states. During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive “net internal migration,” in the Census Bureau’s language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.
These folks pulling up stakes and driving U-Haul trucks across state lines understand a reality the defenders of the high-benefit/high-tax model must confront: All things being equal, everyone would rather pay low taxes than high ones. The high-benefit/high-tax model can work only if things are demonstrably not equal — if the public goods purchased by the high taxes far surpass the quality, quantity and impact of those available to people who live in states with low taxes.
And it’s here that I hope the author has done his homework; we’ve been through this before.
Refugees from California have already spent the last twenty years fleeing California – for Oregon and for Colorado. They fled the taxes; they brought their taste for lots of “services”. Ditto New Hampshire and Vermont; inundated with Massachussetts tax refugees, they have turned their adopted states into high-tax, high-“service” hellholes of their very own.
But what does that get you these days? (Emphasis added):
Today’s public benefits fail that test, as urban scholar Joel Kotkin of NewGeography.com and Chapman University told the Los Angeles Times in March: “Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California. Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”
You could say the same about Minnesota and its low tax neighbors.
In more ways than one:
These judgments are not based on drive-by sociology. According to a report issued earlier this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” even though per-pupil expenditures on public school students are 12% higher in California. The details of the Census Bureau data show that Texas not only spends its citizens’ dollars more effectively than California but emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. Per capita spending on transportation was 5.9% lower in California, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5% lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.
Perhaps people in Texas, Fargo and Miami will start complaining that if the liberals don’t shut up about being “happy to pay for a better Texas, Fargo or Florida”, they’ll turn into a “warm Los Angeles?”
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