Showing posts with label demographics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label demographics. Show all posts

Monday, June 21, 2010

Follow the Money: Where Americans Are Moving

If you want to know where people are moving from and to, Forbes.com has a handy dandy map that shows net population moves within the United States. It's interesting to see how places like Los Angeles and San Diego are losing population to other parts of the country (except that there's a net influx from the NY metro area), but Manhattan is seeing a net inflow. Yet, while Manhattan is seeing an influx, Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens, Nassau, Suffolk, Orange , Rockland, Passaic,  Essex, and Bergen Counties are all seeing losses. Brooklyn has a mixed flow.

Moreover, those losses are also showing that those leaving are taking with them higher paying jobs than the population coming to replace them.

That means a shrinking tax base.

These maps show that people are moving and taking their tax revenues with them and is correlative to the high tax burdens in major metropolitan areas like New York City, Los Angeles, or other areas that have long pursued tax and spend policies.

It's yet another reminder that the high tax burdens and tax and spend policies are sending those people who can afford to move away out of the state, increasing the tax burden on those that remain.

Detroit's map is indicative of what has happened:
That flight from Detroit has meant thousands of abandoned buildings and an inability to provide services for those residents who remain. The city's solution? Demolish thousands of buildings and return them to park land status or hope for some form of urban renewal (that wont come unless there's fundamental changes in the tax and spend nature of the local government). And even then, the local government can't get the job done right because they didn't take environmental concerns into account and started demolishing buildings without knowing whether there was asbestos present.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Factoid of the Day

This one is courtesy of New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg who fancies himself an Independent:
The mayor said "51, 52 percent of our taxes come from people making $500,000 or more."

"Five thousand people back in 2006, it's probably a little more diverse today, but in 2006, 5,000 people paid 30 percent of the taxes in New York City.

"If only 1,500 of that 5,000 people move to Connecticut, that would cut 10 percent of our tax base, that's another $3.5 billion," added Bloomberg, who has repeatedly warned that higher income taxes will damage the city's already reeling economy.
5,000 people out of 8 million pay 30% of the city's taxes.

The financial crisis is hitting the top wage earners in the city hard, which we've already seen as a result of flagging revenues at the state and local level in the NYC metro area. It's only going to get worse if the state seeks to impose still more taxes on these people.

That you have so few people paying so much under the current taxing scheme shows the redistributionist nature of the tax system and how so many people are tethered to the wealth of so few people in the private sector. The City's fiscal well being is predicated on taking the revenue from this select number of people, and spreading it around.

Without the revenues coming in from a healthy Wall Street, there's no money to spread around, which means that the government has to target someone for the shortfall.

UPDATE:
Don Surber links. Thanks!