How Do You Tax The Rich When They're Gone?

As more than a few countries have found out over the years, you can tax the rich to the point that they decide it’s time for them to leave...and take their wealth with them. The UK found that out in the 1970s and France learned that in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s. They both imposed confiscatory taxes on the rich and were surprised when the rich fled. The amount of taxes collected never even came close to matching the projected revenues. Those taxes also had the effect of tanking the economies when investment capital dried up as a result. Who would want to invest if the government would be taking a huge percentage of profits in taxes? (Actually, France realized they had made a huge mistake and backed off on those taxes, but didn’t remove them entirely. Before the did so, a lot of the wealthy bailed. A lot of them did not return after France rescinded some of those taxes.)

It seems at least one US state is learning that lesson...and it isn’t California.

Widespread shortages. Economic tumult. Disappearing businesses. When Ayn Rand released her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957, her critics considered it a work of fiction. She did not.

Her art is now imitating life in Pennsylvania. Fiction or not, Rand was prescient.

She predicted a world where government and “looters” (as she called them) exploited producers. A mysterious man named John Galt gets those business owners and workers to leave and recreate a free and fair society elsewhere.

In Pennsylvania, leaders like Gov. Tom Wolf and Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney demonize financially successful individuals, with promises that if the all-powerful government bureaucracy could just take more of their money, our problems would be solved. Wolf, Kenney, and their supporters operate under the misguided belief that bigger government will heal the Earth, defeat racism, and end poverty.

Worthy goals, wrong solutions — and Pennsylvanians know it. While some will wait for November to register their discontent at the ballot box, many are already voting with their feet.

A new poll from the Commonwealth Foundation (my employer) shows that nearly 70% of Pennsylvanians think things “have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track” in our state. That’s more than a third higher than the number of New Jersey and New York residents who think their state is on the wrong course.

While California is still looting wealth from the people making it, it hasn’t gotten quite bad enough to see a mass exodus of the wealthy. But a lot of the smaller business owners and workers have already packed up and abandoned the Pyrite State because the Progressive government was “eating of their substance” and making it more difficult to survive. They voted with their feet to head to greener pastures. Can anyone (except the Progressive looters) blame them? At least the Keystone State has a chance to correct that problem come November.