Like Massachusetts, New York and California continue to lose citizens tired of the high cost of living, high taxes, and regulations who choose to move to other more family friendly and business frindly states.
Via today’s Wall St. Journal:
New York, which finished second, has no such act-of-God excuse. It lost more than 225,000, or a rate of 11.69 per 1,000 from 2005 to 2006, and more than 1.2 million New Yorkers have moved out since 2000. California lost the most people (287,000) of any state from 2005 to 2006, but because it is the most populous state its out-migration rate was a merely dreadful 7.92. Without immigrants who have made up some of the difference, both states, and especially New York, would have declining overall populations and thus shrinking tax bases.
One of the major reasons that people in my old home state of California are leaving in record numbers are things like Governor Schwartzenegger’s universal coverage healthcare plan just introduced.
Last November, Gov. Schwarzenegger won landslide re-election in part by winning 91% of Republicans with an ironclad pledge not to raise taxes. He pounded Phil Angelides, his Democratic opponent, for wanting to raise taxes by $7 billion to pay for universal health care. But now the estimated cost of the Schwarzenegger plan to cover California’s uninsured, including two million illegal aliens, is $12 billion. State subsidies for people to buy insurance will extend to those earning up to $50,000 a year, more than California’s median income. “He’s creating a welfare state where more than half the people are in the wagon being pulled than outside the wagon pulling,” says one health-care analyst.
As bad as the policy implications are, the governor’s plan may be fatally flawed, politically. He insists it doesn’t raise taxes, despite billions in new charges on doctors, hospitals and employers. He prefers to call the new revenue “in-lieu fees” and “coverage dividends.” “He excoriated Phil Angelides, rightly, for proposing the same tax increases he has put on the table,” says GOP state Sen. Tom McClintock. “He is now pushing the second largest tax increase in California history. I won’t be able to trust anything he says.”
rest of story here.
If this plan goes forward (and the federal courts may strike it down as they have the “Wal Mart Law”) the unions and 2 million illegals getting tax payer funded healthcare will be happy. But it means that more of California’s most productive citizens will be moving out. And that does not bode well for California just like Governor Romney’s similar health care plan won’t for businesses and the taxpayers of the Commonwealth.
What is the common denominator in Mass, NY, and California? Wimpy liberal governors who call themselves Republicans who are all fundamentally liberals. I think there is a name for this type of individual. RINO.