New York and California "had better get their act together" on their "punitive" tax systems or else face the continued exodus "millions of people" and "billions" of revenue, especially high-income taxpayers who support of the bulk of the blue state economies, according to economist Stephen Moore.
"The point of our article, John, is the people in Albany [New York] and the people in Sacramento, California, had better get their act together and fix the tax system so it's not punitive – or a lot of your high-income people will be leaving the state," Moore said on Sunday's "The Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM-N.Y.
Moore co-wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal this week with Arthur Laffer, which detailed over-taxed, high-income residents are contemplating joining the "blue state exodus" and fleeing to more tax-friendly states.
Moore, a Trump economic adviser and a fellow for The Heritage Foundation's Project for Economic Growth, called for flat state and local tax rates to help curb the departures. For instance, whereas New York's high-income residents currently pay 13 percent income tax, Moore calls for a standard income tax rate for all levels of earners of six percent.
"That works in a lot of states, and I'd love to see New York save itself by doing something like that," Moore told host John Catsimatidis.
Moore denounced obstructionist Democrats' "stupid strategy" for putting themselves in this position by resisting the Trump administration in its year 1 push for tax reform, when they could have helped themselves by being a part of the process.
"The problem is every Democrat in the Senate voted against the tax bill," Moore told Catsimatidis. ". . . Right at the beginning of the process, [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] said every Democrat was going to vote against it.
"That was a stupid strategy. They should have put themselves in play. We could have probably got a better tax bill, if the Democrats had been cooperative."
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