Millions and Millions of Dollars

There's been some interesting talk about Wisconsin millionaires in the news.   

Here's some information from back in March.

And a blog post today from Will Blog for Food.

And yesterday this article came out: Wisconsin Millionaires Expected to Double in 10 Years.  Basically the article says that some millionaires lost that status during the recession and they are expected to get that status back as the economy continues to recover.  But this in itself is important to me and many other middle class Americans who are going to see their salaries shrink.  The article quotes Patrick Mehigan from Deloitte's tax branch in Milwaukee. 

“But for those that say that we're losing millionaires in Wisconsin because of whatever possible policy, I think this study would at least suggest that's not the case."

You know who "those" are, don't you?  Why our own Governor Walker and his far right Republican Congress!  And every other Republican politician in this country.

Republicans are always saying that taxing the rich will cause them to leave a state for another one with lower taxes.  But is that really true?  Not according to this post.  

"Earlier this month, the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts (PERI) released a study by Jeffrey Thompson that concluded that the availability of jobs, rather than relative levels of taxation, is the leading factor that causes people to move from one state to another. It also found 'that the impact of taxes on cross-state migration is very weak.'”

And here's some further information from the Wisconsin Budget Project.  It quoted:

"Evidence from surveys of migrating households, the existing economic literature, and the new analysis in this paper all suggest that taxes do not play any notable role in causing people to leave a state. The most important factors in influencing household migration are economic and family-related reasons. If anything, higher state income taxes are shown to decrease the numbers of people leaving a state. Taxes do appear to influence the choice of which state to live in once a person has decided to move, but the impact is modest. If states use the revenues from higher taxes to create jobs, reduce unemployment, and reduce property crime, the small negative impacts from taxes can be easily overcome.”

So see?  You don't have to harbor that sympathy for the rich anymore.  They will do just fine, no matter what state they live in and what taxes they pay.