Are we poorer or not?
Sorry, this is going to be a long one. So I’m breaking it into sections.
Section 1: The News
The Star-Ledger offers us competing opinions on taxes and the Great Exodus from New Jersey. First up, conservative commentator, Paul Mulshine:
The reaction to McGreevey’s class warfare [note: income tax increase on high wage earners] was similar. The wealthy fled New Jersey or just declined to move here. New Jersey’s net drop in wealth between 2004 and 2008 was $70 billion, the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy stated.
Mulshine makes a direct connection between the increase in income tax and the loss of wealth. His fellow columnist, Tom Moran, however, isn’t so sure:
For a careful academic like John Havens, a specialist on wealth at Boston College, these are trying times.He finished a study last week that showed New Jersey lost nearly $70 billion in net wealth from 2004 to 2008 because we lost more wealthy people than we gained.
Then the politicians got a hold of it. And suddenly the report was twisted out of shape, presented as proof that New Jersey must rush to cut income taxes on the rich by $1 billion in the midst of our worst budget shortfall ever.
“I didn’t say that,” Havens says. “Taxes are just one possiblity.”
In fact, Havens thinks the causes of this trend may lie elsewhere. But no matter. His study now has the status of a rotten tomato in Trenton’s latest food fight. It’s going to be used as the combatants see fit.
Moran goes on to say that the State Treasury Department shows the number of families earning more than $500,000 has actually increased during the time McGreevey’s and Corzine’s income tax hikes were in effect – and then quotes State Senator Joe Pennacchio’s disbelief in those numbers.
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