A Great Topic for Study

If I didn't have to work for a living, I'd be tempted to take on the project myself.  These days I constantly hear stories about how there are mass migrations of companies and people out of blue states and into red ones.  Most notably out of California and into Texas, as has been highlighted by this week's high-profile recruiting trip taken by Rick Perry to pitch Texas to a bunch of California companies.

Indiana has been claiming a nice influx of companies relocating out of places like Illinois and Michigan.  I'd like to find some actual numbers that would tell me how many companies, how many people came with them, and how much the move is contributing to their bottom lines.

Certainly if I were a rich guy like Phil Mickelson, I'd be putting my SoCal mansion up for sale and shopping for a new place somewhere in Florida.  The savings for somebody like Phil are huge, and my only question for him would be why he didn't move a long time ago.  He got hammered so hard for making his offhand comment about having to make some changes that he actually apologized.  There was absolutely nothing he needed to apologize for.  At least he just said he shouldn't have said it publicly, so I take that to mean he isn't backing off the basic message - he just regrets all the public attention he drew to himself.

Back home in Indiana, our new governor, Mike Pence, is planning to cut state taxes by about 10 percent.  Democrats call that everything from grandstanding to irresponsible.  I merely think Mike needs to be careful.  Don't cut taxes unless at the same time you change the structure of spending to protect the budget from the potential of reduced revenue from the cuts. 

Economics and historical evidence from Reagan suggest that lower taxes stimulate private investment, which ends up returning more revenue to the government in total, not less.  It's true, despite decades of Democrat denial and ridicule.  Certainly Indiana could use a rethinking of its tax structure, given what I think is an unnecessary level of taxation when you add together the State income tax, local income tax, property taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, inventory taxes, and so on ad-infinitem.

Education was made a priority by Mitch Daniels.  The first education voucher system in the country is showing some positive early signs, but those may be offsite by the fact that the State elected a new Education Superintendent who is a teacher's union shill who is determined to overturn the voucher system. 

Imagine Indiana were to become the place with one of the lowest tax burdens, with the best-educated population in America.  The smartest thing Pence can do as governor is to make those two goals the centerpiece of his agenda over the next 8 years.

I'm sort of looking forward to finding out what happens in my state over the next few years.