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Taxes Driving the Rich Out of Rhode Island?


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#1 Rogerdodger

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Posted 21 January 2011 - 09:40 AM

Taxes Driving the Rich Out of Rhode Island


"Rhode Island has lost 107,000 residents to other states, or about one in 10 adults. The exodus cost the state and local governments more than $9 million a year in lost revenue, the study concludes.
“The most significant driver of out-migration is the estate tax,” the report stated. It said most of the migrating wealthy are moving to Florida, which abolished its estate tax in 2004. Rhode Island’s estate tax averages about 0.06% and kicks in at $859,350 this year (it is pegged to inflation). That is a lower threshold than all but two other states."

Edited by Rogerdodger, 21 January 2011 - 09:55 AM.


#2 stocks

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Posted 24 May 2011 - 02:02 PM

New York's future is fleeing

For one thing, according to a recent survey in Chief Executive, our state has the second-worst business climate in the country. (Only California ranks lower.) People go where the jobs are, so when a state repels businesses, it repels residents, too.

The problem is that the kind of work available shows that the city accommodates new immigrants much better than it supports middle-class aspirations. A recent report from the Drum Major Institute has the data: "The two fastest-growing industries in New York are also the lowest-paid. More than half of the city's employment growth over the past year has been in retail, hospitality and food services, all of which pay their workers less than half of the city's average wage."

The implications of Gotham's "hourglass economy" -- with all the action on the top and the bottom and not much in the middle -- are daunting.


Read more: http://www.nypost.co...L#ixzz1NIWYWlAS
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#3 stocks

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Posted 25 June 2011 - 09:04 AM

The Rise Of The Third Coast: The Gulf Region’s Ascendancy In U.S.

In Forbes’ rankings of the fastest-growing job markets in the country, six Gulf cities made the top 50: Houston, Corpus Christi and Brownsville, in Texas; New Orleans; and Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula, in Mississippi. In contrast, just one Pacific port, Anchorage, Alaska, and one small Atlantic port, Portsmouth, N.H., made the cut.

This reflects a long-term shift of money, power and jobs away from both the North Atlantic and the Pacific to the cities of the Gulf. The Port of Houston, for example, enjoyed a 28.1% jump in foreign trade this year, and trade at Louisiana’s main ports also reached records levels.

The energy-related economy produces high-wage jobs that range from geology and engineering to the muscle work on the oil rigs, which provide well above average wages for blue collar workers. Such growth is particularly critical to regions such as New Orleans, long dependent on generally lower-wage industries like hospitality and personal services. The energy business also will help accelerate the expansion of business services such as law, accounting, architecture and advertising.

The shift to the Gulf includes some rapid industrial expansion, particularly for energy intensive industries. Huge natural gas supplies are creating enormous opportunities for expanding petrochemical industries. The German firm Thyssen Krupp opened a new $5 billion steel mill last year, and Nucor Steel announced a large new facility to be built just outside New Orleans. Like energy production, these facilities tend to pay above-average wages for blue collar workers, which will likely raise living standards for a region that has lagged historically.

At the same time, demographic trends suggest these areas will continue to become more attractive to international commerce. Despite a legacy of hurricanes and floods, Houston, with over 5 million people, has emerged as among the fastest-growing large metropolitan regions in the country. The region’s population is expected to double in the next 20 years. Most of the economies its port serves — Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin — also have experienced rapid growth. Recoveries are in place in many other hurricane-devastated areas, including greater New Orleans.

Gulf
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#4 stocks

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Posted 13 July 2011 - 10:07 AM

California companies fleeing the Golden State

"California, once a business friendly state, continues to conduct a war on its own economy,"

Buffeted by high taxes, strict regulations and uncertain state budgets, a growing number of California companies are seeking friendlier business environments outside of the Golden State.
Companies are "disinvesting" in California at a rate five times greater than just two years ago, said Joseph Vranich, a business relocation expert based in Irvine. This includes leaving altogether, establishing divisions elsewhere or opting not to set up shop in California.

"There is a feeling that the state is not stable," Vranich said. "Sacramento can't get its act together...and that includes the governor, legislators and regulatory agencies that are running wild."
The state has been ranked by Chief Executive magazine as the worst place to do business for seven years.

Cali
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#5 stocks

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Posted 28 August 2011 - 10:42 AM

The Great Political Migration

Millions of people are, for good reason, abandoning big-government blue states for low-tax red ones.


Between 2009 and 2010 the five biggest losers in terms of “residents lost to other states” were all prominent redoubts of progressivism: California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the five biggest winners in the relocation sweepstakes are all commonly identified as red states in which Republicans generally dominate local politics: Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia. Expanding the review to a 10-year span, the biggest population gainers (in percentage terms) have been even more conservative than last year’s winners: Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, and Texas, in that order.

Migration
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#6 stocks

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Posted 06 September 2011 - 10:40 AM

The Golden State Is Crumbling

The state's regulatory vigilantes have erected a labyrinth of rules that increasingly makes doing almost anything that might contribute to increased carbon emissions—manufacturing, conventional energy, home construction—extraordinarily onerous. Not surprisingly, the state has not gained middle-skilled jobs (those requiring two years of college or more) for a decade, while the nation boosted them by 5 percent and archrival Texas by a stunning 16 percent over the same time period.

What has happened to my adopted home state of over last decade is a tragedy, both for Californians and for America. For most of the past century, California has been "golden" not only in name but in every kind of superlative—a global leader in agriculture, energy, entertainment, technology, and most important of all, human aspiration.

In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872, the second president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, said science was "the mother of California." Today, California may worship at the altar of science, but increasingly in the most regressive, hysterical, and reactionary way.

California's dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

Cali
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.
 

#7 voltaire

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Posted 07 September 2011 - 04:35 AM

Lowering taxation is a race to the bottom. Make it zero and you will attract everyone. Everyone hates tax and the lower the more attractive. The US indulges what is what is known as transfer pricing like other nations. This is generating all profit in an overseas base and then reselling at cost or a loss at final point of sale. So one can sell in the market at final point of sale and incur no tax and profit is in a tax haven. Are you happy with that arrangement? This is a great argument for a "consumption" tax or VAT or the like. Forget income taxes. Allow as much income tax free as you wish and then tax purchasing. Purchasing cannot be avoided and will be taxed. Saving or generating income is not taxed. Sounds good to me.

#8 Rogerdodger

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Posted 07 September 2011 - 11:18 AM

I love black or white, either or, lines of reasoning.
I also love the ability to ignore reality and overlook examples of how utopian collectivism along with stateism always turns out.
See Detroit in Ruins.
Or check out East Berlin in it's commie heyday.

Realville is never taught in universities.
As a professor friend recently e-mailed his students (and sent me a copy) that he doesn't like the real world and has managed to escape it by spending his life in academia.
I'd always suspected that.
He confirmed it.
It must be a wonderful world, up there, above it all, pontificating.
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Edited by Rogerdodger, 07 September 2011 - 11:25 AM.


#9 stocks

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Posted 07 September 2011 - 01:51 PM

Rhode Island Pension System Collapsing

The only problem is that the state could never afford the beautiful utopia it was crafting, and so politicians and union leaders chose the path of systemic deceit. Taxpayers weren’t told what the bill for the system would be; public service workers weren’t told that the pension guarantees they’d been sold were worthless because taxpayers would not and could not foot the bill.

An economic crisis is nature’s revenge on those who make and those who accept false promises; it is a holocaust of lies when the dross is burned away and only what is real and true remains.

The Ponzi-scheme quality of the retirement system is becoming more and more obvious: current employees have to pay more and more into the system but instead of being set aside to pay their pensions, the money is going to current retirees.

A lot of people who believed Rhode Island’s lies will now be looking for part time work in what they were told would be a secure retirement. As far as I can tell the union leaders and politicians who concocted this disaster between them have no plans to suffer any cuts in their own pay or pension plans — and intend to go on “serving the public” without any accountability at all.

Pension
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#10 stocks

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Posted 09 September 2011 - 08:22 PM

The Rise Of The Third Coast: The Gulf Region’s Ascendancy In U.S.

In Forbes’ rankings of the fastest-growing job markets in the country, six Gulf cities made the top 50: Houston, Corpus Christi and Brownsville, in Texas; New Orleans; and Gulfport-Biloxi and Pascagoula, in Mississippi. In contrast, just one Pacific port, Anchorage, Alaska, and one small Atlantic port, Portsmouth, N.H., made the cut.


Union Thugs & Containerization


About 500 longshoremen stormed the new $200 million terminal in Longview before sunrise Thursday, carrying baseball bats, smashing windows, damaging rail cars and dumping tons of grain from the cars, police and company officials said.

... one of the forgotten efficiencies bestowed by the containerization revolution after WWII in which sealed standardized steel boxes that could be carried by truck, rail, and ship became the norm. Containerization made it much harder for stevedores to steal some of the cargo. Theft had been a traditional perk of working on the docks. Wikipedia explains:

Improved cargo security is also an important benefit of containerization. The cargo is not visible to the casual viewer and thus is less likely to be stolen; the doors of the containers are usually sealed so that tampering is more evident. Some containers are fitted with electronic monitoring devices and can be remotely monitored for changes in air pressure, which happens when the doors are opened. This reduced the thefts that had long plagued the shipping industry.

BTW, the American engineer who invented the modern container, Keith W. Tantlinger, just died.

Container
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Defenders of the status quo are always stronger than reformers seeking change, 
UNTIL the status quo self-destructs from its own corruption, and the reformers are free to build on its ashes.