Meathead economics hurting California

Opinion Journal:

It takes hard work to drive anyone away from California's sunshine and scenic vistas, but politicians in Sacramento have been up to the task.

The latest Census Bureau data indicate that, in 2005, 239,416 more native-born Americans left the state than moved in. California is also on pace to lose domestic population (not counting immigrants) this year. The outmigration is such that the cost to rent a U-Haul trailer to move from Los Angeles to Boise, Idaho, is $2,090--or some eight times more than the cost of moving in the opposite direction.

What's gone wrong? A big part of the story is a tax and regulatory culture that treats the most productive businesses and workers as if they were ATMs. The cost to businesses of complying with California's rules, regulations and paperwork is more than twice as high as in other Western states.

But the worst growth killer may well be California's tax system. The business tax rate of 8.8% is the highest in the West, and its steeply "progressive" personal income tax has an effective top marginal rate of 10.3%, or second highest in the nation. CalTax, the state's taxpayer advocacy group, reports that the richest 10% of earners pay almost 75% of the entire income-tax revenue in the state, and most of these are small business owners, i.e., the people who create jobs.

And things may soon get worse, thanks to Rob Reiner, who played the liberal "Meathead" on the "All in the Family" sitcom in the 1970s and now plays the same part in real life. He and his rich Hollywood friends have put an initiative on the state's June ballot that would add a 1.7-percentage-point income-tax surcharge on "millionaires" with income over $400,000, with the proceeds earmarked for universal pre-school.

This isn't Mr. Reiner's first foray into confiscatory tax politics. Last year he sponsored a ballot initiative narrowly approved by voters that imposed a percentage-point income-tax surcharge (to the current 10.3%) to pay for government mental-health subsidies. And in the late 1990s he helped to pass an initiative to raise the state's tobacco tax by 50 cents a pack to pay for children's health care.

All of this has contributed to the trend of wealthy taxpayers disappearing from the state. State finance office data indicate that the number of Californians reporting million-dollar incomes fell to 25,000 in 2003 from 44,000 in 2000. That decline has cost the state $9 billion a year in uncollected tax revenues. The dot-com implosion of 2000 and 2001 no doubt wiped out many paper millionaires, but migration out of the state to escape its hefty tax premium has also played a role. Republican Assemblyman Ray Haynes notes that the average high-income individual can buy a newly built house in neighboring Nevada and pay for it just from the money saved in a year of not paying California taxes.

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There is more. Californians should be as smart as soon to be former Californian Reggie Bush who indicated one of the reasons he favored playing for the Houston Texans--no state income tax. If he gets it, why can't the rest of the people. Oh, they are not milioaires or soon to be millionaires. Perhaps if they just limited the tax to people in the entertainment business there would be fewer liberals in Los Angelos.