Laffer Curve Slaps Oregon Gov't Silly

[roo_ster]

AKA, "John Galt Tells Oregon Politicians to Screw Off"

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/john-galt-tells-oregon-politicians-to-screw-off/

Essentially, Oregonian policritters decided to bend teh "rich" over again and have their way with them again, via raising income tax rates.  No lube the first year, as they made it retroactive.

But, it turns out that 1/4 of the "rich" decided to bail on Oregon and Oregon made no more revenue than before.



Silly lefties.

[dm1333]

Silly lefties.

I'm left handed.  On behalf of left handed people everywhere please don't do that again!

[MillCreek]

Wealthy Oregonians are more than welcome to move up here to Washington.  Those of us up here in the upper left corner are all brothers under the skin.  Washington has no income tax. 

[Monkeyleg]

I love it! How much would you care to bet the OR politicians don't learn their lesson?

[roo_ster]

I'm left handed.  On behalf of left handed people everywhere please don't do that again!

Duly noted.

I am mostly right handed, but I always hit the baseball lefty and golfed lefty(1).  I can also write lefty, but take 50% more time.




(1)  I golfed equally poorly righty or lefty.

[Desertdog]

Rush Limbaugh moved from NY to Florida for the same reason.

[Jamisjockey]

All your rich people are belong to us.

While we're not rich, our recent move to Tejas was guided by the lack of income tax as well.

[AmbulanceDriver]

Yeah... Essentially, it went something like this:

Oregon Policritters:  LET'S RAISE TAXES ON THOSE EEEEEEEEVIL RICH FOLKS!!!!!

Common sense folks:  If you do that, they're just gonna leave the state.........

OP's:  NO, THEY'D NEVER DO THAT, OREGON IS TOO GOOD TO THEM!!!!!

CSF's:  *smack* hey stupid.  We're telling you,  you're gonna drive the "rich folk's" away from the state, and the jobs they create are probably gonna go with them!

OP's:  Hah, you so silly you little CSF's....  They'd never leave Orygun.........


OP's:  Hey, where'd all the rich folks we were gonna tax go???

[Jamisjockey]

OP's:  Since some of the rich people left, lets just tax the rest of them moar!

[AmbulanceDriver]

OP's:  Since some of the rich people left, lets just tax the rest of them moar!

Dammit, don't give them any ideas!!!!!

[Boomhauer]

OP's:  Since some of the rich people left, lets just tax the rest of them moar!

This and the saying that leftists believe socialism/communism hasn't worked only because the right people (them) haven't been put in charge yet perfectly illustrate their insanity.

[RocketMan]

I love it! How much would you care to bet the OR politicians don't learn their lesson?

They never have before.  I don't expect them to this time, either.
Oregon is my home state.  I plan to move in the next couple of years, maybe back to Texas.

[HankB]

It's not like there haven't been examples of this before. During the Clinton administration, they decided to punish the rich by putting a BIG tax on new luxury boats - mini-yachts, if you will.

What happened?

Yacht builders in Bermuda and other places saw a big uptick in business, and around 60,000 people in the USA - yacht builders and their suppliers - lost their jobs. Net loss of revenue.

Duh.   

[Monkeyleg]

It's not like there haven't been examples of this before. During the Clinton administration, they decided to punish the rich by putting a BIG tax on new luxury boats - mini-yachts, if you will.

What happened?

Yacht builders in Bermuda and other places saw a big uptick in business, and around 60,000 people in the USA - yacht builders and their suppliers - lost their jobs. Net loss of revenue.

Duh.   

Oh, yeah. I remember that. My photo studio was 5,000 square feet, in part because I did a lot of shooting of boats. When the tax went up, those assignments went away. Trickle-down economics the way the Dem's do it.

[tokugawa]

Yep- I used to be a boatbuilder-high end custom yachts- Those evil rich folks would waste thier perfectly good money by buying a huge yacht . And pay 60 or  70 people a good wage for a couple of years to build it.  Evil bastards. They had to be stopped!  Let those shipwrights find another job, like the loggers, and the fishermen, we CANNOT HAVE THE EVIL RICH ENJOYING THIER MONEY NO MATTER HOW MANY JOBS IT CREATES! 
 So the yacht building jobs went phoof! 
 
 .

[Physics]

Wealthy Oregonians are more than welcome to move up here to Washington.  Those of us up here in the upper left corner are all brothers under the skin.  Washington has no income tax. 

I love Oregon, but if it makes more financial sense to live in Washington, well, Vancouver isn't that far from Portland.  Of course, I suppose I need to get rich first.

[MillCreek]

What a lot of people do is live in Vancouver and work in Portland to avoid the Oregon income tax, and buy things in Portland to avoid the Washington sales tax. 

[Physics]

What a lot of people do is live in Vancouver and work in Portland to avoid the Oregon income tax, and buy things in Portland to avoid the Washington sales tax. 

Yeah, I grew up in the Astoria area.  A lot of people live in Long Beach or Naselle and work in Astoria.  I've heard the same about Portland/Vancouver.  You also avoid Oregon's crazy property taxes.  I figured they would have invented some tax to stop this by now, considering it's been going on for decades.  Luckily, they're not that "smart". 

[MillCreek]

The Washington state Department of Revenue has gotten exceedingly gung ho in recent years on tracking down expensive car and RV registrations.  It seems a lot of people living in Washington were buying them in Oregon to avoid the Washington sales tax, but then using a fictitious or convenience address in Oregon to avoid paying the annual Washington state vehicle registration taxes.  This was while the actual vehicle was being kept in Washington and the owners resided in Washington. So they now encourage people to turn in your neighbor about that Marathon RV with the Oregon plates in the driveway. 

[RocketMan]

Kinda, sorta a little bit related to this discussion...Of the top five most inventive states in the country, counting patents per capita, Oregon is number two on the list.  (Story on CNN Money).  With the growing anti-business sentiment in this state, I wonder how long that is going to last.

The number one state, Utah, has almost twice the number of patents per capita.  In reading the article, it seems they have a much more business friendly outlook.  A business friendly attitude is not even mentioned with regard to Oregon.

[MillCreek]

In reading the article, I saw confirmation of what I thought might be a partial driver of the increased number of patents:  Cooperation between industry and academia.  I know a lot of universities now have departments designed to capitalize on intellectual property and work in close coordination with business to bring new inventions to market.  I bet that the return on investment of those sort of efforts would be pretty good. 

[MillCreek]

Also related to state tax policy in terms of tax reductions, rebates and incentives is the story of Boeing in Washington.  Boeing pretty much gets whatever it wants from the Washington state legislature.  The number of tax breaks they have gotten in recent years is enormous.  The implicit understanding was that in return, Boeing would continue to invest in Washington. 

That has not quite panned out as people have hoped, given that Boeing moved the headquarters to Chicago and is building a new plant in South Carolina to build the 787 rather than expanding existing plants in Washington.  Boeing then complains about the disrepair of Washington's educational and road infrastructure, and kind of glosses over how their tax breaks help contribute to that.  But on the upside, the state freeway leading to the large plant in Everett just got a nice new paving job.  Just for the Boeing employees.

[Tallpine]

The number one state, Utah, has almost twice the number of patents per capita.

What else is there to do in Utah, except invent things? 

[roo_ster]

What else is there to do in Utah, except invent things? 

Make little Mormons, by the demographic data.