From Kevin Williamson at National Review, A Conservative Tax Hike

Eliminating deductibility for state and local income taxes is of course politically satisfying for mean-spirited conservatives such as myself — it constitutes a very substantial tax increase on the sort of well-kept and comfortable lefty Californians and New Yorkers from whom we tend to hear more than maybe we really want to on all sorts of political issues. Rich Democrats in Santa Monica and on the Upper West Side think we should have higher taxes, and we knuckle-dragging right-wingers down in Texas and Florida disagree. This way, everybody gets what he wants.

California is very expensive by American standards and a bargain by world standards. As it turns out, people are pretty good at figuring that out: California has for some years been losing its native-born population to the other 49 states, but those emigrants are more than replaced by immigrants from around the world, many of them from places that make California look lightly taxed and well governed. (Which it is, by comparison with India or Venezuela.) That isn’t how I’d do things if I were the Emperor of Malibu, but Californians, so far, seem to be content with their own way of doing things. Let California be California.

And let Californians pay for it.

 

print