Where is John Galt?

For residents of New York State, taxes just shot up (again) because a fellow New Yorker, Tom Golisano, a self-made Rochester billionaire, is picking up his chips and moving his legal residence to Florida.

It's hard to blame him. New York's Democrat Governor Patterson and our "for-the-little-people" legislature recently issued an almost 9% so-called "Millionaire's Tax" on the financially very successful. Moving to Florida, which has no state income tax, will save Golisano $13,000 per day.

In terms that a lowly non-billionaire like myself can understand, that's $13,000 per day that the rest of New Yorkers will have to pay.

Golisano is not the only rich guy heading for literally greener pastures. This year alone, about 10% of New York's millionaires are expected to respond to the tax increase by leaving the state, taking with them almost $22 billion in income tax revenue.

That's an impressive $1130 per man, woman, and child in New York State, of whom only an unimpressive one third pay income tax.

If you happen to be an income-tax paying resident of New York State, the "Millionaire's Tax" is going to cost you, on average, $1130 x 3 (your share plus 2 other New Yorkers' shares), or, roughly, $3,390.

Every year.

"This budget and this increase in the level of taxation are really going to push a lot more people out of the state," Golisano told a gathering of Rochester business executives Thursday. . . .

As high taxes drive more and more people out of the state, including young people just starting out and retirees on fixed incomes, other local taxes rise, because fewer people are around to chip in for schools, roads, police protection, sewer systems, trash pick-up, and other niceties.

Golisano can expect a warm welcome in Florida. "It's good for us, it's good for Naples, if he's going to spend time or money here," said Naples Mayor Bill Barnett, a White Plains [New York] native. "Welcome aboard."

Paul Craig Roberts, President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, posting at CounterPunch, pointed out:

Historically, the definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. Serfs were not free, because they owed their feudal lords, the government of that time, a maximum of one-third of their labor. Nineteenth century slaves were not free, because their owners could expropriate 50 per cent of their labor.

Today, no American is a free person. The lowest tax rate, not counting state income, property tax and sales tax, is 15 per cent Social Security tax and 15 per cent federal income tax. The “free American” starts off with a 30 per cent tax rate, the position of a medieval serf.

Anyone else for tossing some tax forms into New York Harbor?
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