The Heartland Tax Rebellion

The Journal editorializes on the growing phenomenon of states repealing their income taxes, which is putting pressure on governors like Oklahoma's Mary Fallin, whose neighbors are beating her state to the punch.

The tax competition in America's heartland is an encouraging sign that at least some U.S. politicians understand that they can't take prosperity for granted. It must be nurtured with good policy, as they compete for jobs and investment with other states and the rest of the world.

The following table depicts some fairly harsh realities for little Statists.

The tax burden isn't the only factor that determines investment flows and growth. But it is a major signal about how a state treats business, investment and risk-taking. States like New York, California, Illinois and Maryland that have high and rising tax rates also tend to be those that have growing welfare states, heavy regulation, dominant public unions, and budgets that are subject to boom and bust because they rely so heavily on a relatively few rich taxpayers.

California, Illinois, New York, Maryland--and let's not forget Ohio: Prop 2 to you, too.  Aren't those the states waiting hat-in-hand for another federal bailout to prop up their utopian public schemes?

President Obama's ill-fated "stimulus" of 2009 (and proposed "jobs" bill of 2011)was little more than a bailout of little Statists by the big Statist.  It was a redistribution of money from responsible red state taxpayers to irresponsible blue states governments--despite the fact that many red-state taxpayers fled blue states in order to escape their former laboratories of democracy.

Let the big blue states try to tax themselves out of their problems.  Neither the problem nor the solution--Wisconsin's solution at the spending level, and the states' listed in the table above at the tax level--are the federal government's province.