The 'one percent' fleeing the high tax states

NY Post:

New York’s the pits — especially when it comes to economic development, according to a new study. 

The Empire State ranked dead last when it comes to its economic outlook based on Albany’s tax policy. 

The report, authored by economists Arthur Laffer, Jonathan Williams and Stephen Moore, gives New York state, along with New Jersey (45) and California (46), low marks because of excessive tax and spending policies that hurt businesses and individuals. 

“We hate to keep picking on California, New Jersey and New York, but they continue to be models of how not to govern a state,” the report warned. “These three states,” the report continued, “impose tax rates at or near the highest in the nation and about twice the national average.”

New York placed 50th for its high personal and corporate tax rates, 12.62 percent and 15.99 percent, respectively. 

The annual report, “Rich States, Poor States” by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), also takes aim at taxing big earners to close budget shortfalls. 

“You cannot balance the budget on the backs of the 1 percent of the most productive citizens of a state. They will leave, and as the 2010 census points out, they are leaving,” the report says.

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While Maine was not discussed it has the sixth highest tax burden and the Maine Heritage Center did a study of the out migration.
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Of course, this large personal income tax burden comes at an economic price which manifests itself, in part, through the out-migration of people and income to greener pastures. This study examines Maine’s net migration to states without a personal income tax from 1995 (the first year of available data) to 2009 (the latest year of available data) based on data from the Internal Revenue Service.[4] [5] 

Analysis of this migration data shows that Maine has lost people and their income to the nine states that have no personal in-come tax for nearly every year in this time-period. Cumulatively, as shown in Table 1, Maine has lost 11,486 people and $661,274,000 in income. The lost income is a conservative estimate because it does not account for the compounding of in-come over time and the multipliers of the income as it ripples through the economy.....

I think Illinois is having a similar problem especially with large manufacturers.  It is also true that the high tax states still have the highest budget deficits and are plagued with unfunded pension liability that will only make the situation worse.