In “Invest, but don’t play Robin Hood” (Op-ed, Jan. 24) Edward L. Glaeser argues that Governor Patrick’s efforts to raise revenue in a way that would make the Commonwealth’s tax system more progressive — i.e., have people with high incomes pay a larger share — won’t work. Glaeser cites a study claiming that “people and businesses can just leave for jurisdictions with more favorable tax conditions.” He also notes that a “separate study of a 2004 New Jersey millionaires’ tax concluded that it resulted in a loss of $2.5 billion in income in the state.”
Glaeser has been very selective in the studies he chooses to cite. For example, he ignores a 2011 study at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute, focusing on New England, which “suggests that the impact of taxes on cross-state migration decisions is weak. There are many reasons households do not flee from a state when taxes are increased, including the fact that they value the public services financed by taxes, the cost of relocating to a different state (both financially and psychologically) is quite high, and the potential gains from moving are often small.”
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How about this for an argument against taxes. We can't afford them and we don't need rail service to Springfield or New Bedford. Feel free, though, to check that box on your tax returns to pay the higher rate.
And here's another argument against taxes. The WSJ noted that last Thursday that the state was forced to impose new price controls and a cap on overall state health spending because "health care spending has crowded out key public investments", as Deval Patrick put in the MA budget last August. That is: Deval's call for new taxes are NOT to improve transportation, and they are NOT to improve education. The WSJ said "This is salesmanship to disguise that the state's real spending driver is the EXPLODING cost of RomneyCare"...Deval is not telling the truth. And neither is the Boston Globe.