High-tax states are losing people, money and seats in Congress
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 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;01&#x2F;business&#x2F;one-top-taxpayer-moved-and-new-jersey-shuddered.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;01&#x2F;business&#x2F;one-top-taxpayer...</a><p>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?<p>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!