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The Coming Blue State Collapse
Forbes ^ | 2/26/2009 | Rich Karlgaard

Posted on 03/01/2009 11:31:53 PM PST by bruinbirdman

Here's a quick and dirty guess: Upper-middle-class families in blue states--those President Obama calls "the rich"--will soon be paying 20% more a year in state and federal taxes. If you pay $100,000 off of a $300,000 income now, look for $120,000 in a couple of years.

Federal income taxes are going up, and deductions are going down. That much we know. What we don't know yet--but I would bet money on it--is if the 7.65% Social Security and Medicare tax ceiling will be lifted from $102,000 to $150,000 or so.

Taxes are headed up at the state and local level too. Residents in blue states like California and New York will be socked hardest.

Take California. Its top income tax rate is the nation's highest at 9.3%. More appalling, it kicks in at only $47,056 a year. Make too much gold in the Golden State--a million a year--and you are pinched by a 1% surcharge. California also has a 7.25% sales tax, but that's just a base. "Local supplementary taxes are allowed up to 9.25%." Capital gains get no preference. They are taxed like ordinary income.

For all that, California spends more than it takes. The state is on the verge of bankruptcy and just passed a budget with $12 billion of new taxes.

The trend of higher taxes has not escaped California taxpayers. For each of the last five years, California has led the nation in the outflow of its residents to other states. Since 2004, California has lost about a million and a half people from taxpaying households. At the same time, the state has taken in two million people, mostly non- or minimal taxpayers who are newborns or immigrants, legal and illegal.

I focus on California because I live there. The same trend is at play in

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Politics
KEYWORDS:
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1 posted on 03/01/2009 11:31:53 PM PST by bruinbirdman
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To: bruinbirdman

Mark


2 posted on 03/01/2009 11:42:33 PM PST by Sequoyah101 (Get the bats and light the hay)
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To: bruinbirdman
For each of the last five years, California has led the nation in the outflow of its residents to other states. Since 2004, California has lost about a million and a half people from taxpaying households.

Yes and they move to other states and vote for the same tax and spend policy they fled in California. Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine have suffered similarly from the influx of Massachusetts and NYC residents who move here and vote to impose confiscatory taxes and disabling regulations.

3 posted on 03/01/2009 11:46:58 PM PST by Straight Vermonter (Posting from deep behind the Maple Curtain)
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To: Straight Vermonter
"The Coming Blue State Collapse"

Taxes, regulation, and politics may drive taxpayers from blue states, but The Obammunist is more than happy to bail them out. If he does that for four years, he should be a shoo in in 2012. That's a lot of time for vote buying and The Chicago Machinists know how to do it all to well.

yitbos

4 posted on 03/02/2009 12:09:50 AM PST by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds.")
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To: bruinbirdman

“...the 7.65% Social Security and Medicare tax ceiling will be lifted from $102,000 to $150,000 or so.”

The Social Security tax is 6.2% on a maximum of $106,800.

The Medicare tax is 1.45% and there is no ceiling.

Just to get the details straight.


5 posted on 03/02/2009 12:22:39 AM PST by clockwise
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To: bruinbirdman

as the depression deepens, resistance to tax increases will rise.


6 posted on 03/02/2009 12:34:14 AM PST by northislander
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To: Straight Vermonter

Liberals are like a virus, infecting everywhere they move to.


7 posted on 03/02/2009 12:35:31 AM PST by skr (May God confound the enemy)
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To: clockwise
...the 7.65%. . . "Just to get the details straight."

Just to get the details straight, it's twice that much.

yitbos

8 posted on 03/02/2009 12:39:05 AM PST by bruinbirdman ("Those who control language control minds.")
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To: northislander

let’s hope so


9 posted on 03/02/2009 12:47:01 AM PST by Centurion2000 (01-20-2009 : The end of the PAX AMERICANA.)
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To: northislander

Except when they’re on someone else.

And except when you don’t pay the taxes, but are paid with them.

That’s Barry’s big push. Turn 51% of the population into dependents (actually less, since there are so many blueblood trust fund hippies who’ll vote for every socialist dictate), then have a perpetual voting block that will let you crush the productive portion of society at will, forever*.

* forever subject to Shrugging


10 posted on 03/02/2009 12:57:48 AM PST by BobbyT
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To: Straight Vermonter

I really think these people aren’t voting for high taxes and oppressive regulations. I think they are voting to kill babies—and just haven’t noticed that the baby-killers are all socialists.


11 posted on 03/02/2009 2:08:55 AM PST by Arthur McGowan
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To: bruinbirdman

You live in liberal land. They will never learn. The only cure for liberalism to a liberal is more liberalism. The peanut mind of a liberal can never grasp the fact that liberalism is the problem. Do not hope for change.


12 posted on 03/02/2009 2:14:52 AM PST by screaminsunshine (f)
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To: bruinbirdman

bookmark


13 posted on 03/02/2009 2:16:32 AM PST by GiovannaNicoletta
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To: northislander

Soon states will want to secceed from the union and build their own economy back. The war between the capitalists and socialists may get bloody.


14 posted on 03/02/2009 2:17:20 AM PST by screaminsunshine (f)
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To: bruinbirdman

Obama knows who votes for him and who does not.

He will tax the red states to pay for the blue.
Tax the suburbs to pay for the ghettos.

What we should do, is what HL Mencken suggested long ago.
Remove unemployed suffrage.

Welfare recipients, and those who do not contribute to the economy, should not be permitted to vote. Taxpayers and property owners only.


15 posted on 03/02/2009 2:21:44 AM PST by Bon mots
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To: clockwise
My guess is they will remove the ceiling entirely, as part of their sock it to the rich mantra. Maybe as a carrot they will offer them an enhanced ROTH IRA as a trade-off. That has been bantered about before...
16 posted on 03/02/2009 3:15:41 AM PST by taildragger (Palin / Mulally 2012)
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To: Bon mots

That’s racist. ;0)


17 posted on 03/02/2009 4:19:21 AM PST by seemoAR
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To: skr

“Liberals are like a virus, infecting everywhere they move to.”

You nailed it.


18 posted on 03/02/2009 4:34:23 AM PST by bricklayer
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To: Bon mots

That’s how things were a century back. Those times ain’t never coming back.


19 posted on 03/02/2009 5:03:29 AM PST by Vanders9
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To: bruinbirdman

Only for a libtard are these problems “difficult” to solve in their twisted little so-called “minds”....


20 posted on 03/02/2009 5:10:06 AM PST by mo
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