You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
The notion that Americans vote with their feet plays out in this country on a regular basis, as residents flee tax-heavy Blue states in search of fiscal refuge in tax-friendly Red states.
With hard-left lawmakers like newly elected Rep. Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., out to drive up the tax burden, people are skipping town in Democratic strongholds and heading south — to include her own mother, who isn’t shy about stating the reason why she moved.
“I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north. I’m paying $600 a year in Florida. It’s stress-free down here,” Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily Mail.
Ocasio-Cortez moved to Eustis, Florida, a quaint small town just north of Orlando.
She bought an 860-square-foot home on a quiet street that dead-ends at a cemetery for a modest $87,000, according to the Daily Mail.
“I lived in the New York area for most of my life but I started being unable to afford it,” the mother of two said.
Not that the New York Times didn’t try to cover for Blanca.
N.Y. Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman posted a tweet that tried to make it look as if Ocasio-Cortez’s mother moved as a result of the GOP tax reform bill championed by President Trump.
…only to be reminded by Daily Mail political editor David Martosko that while it was a nice try, it wasn’t working.
https://twitter.com/dmartosko/status/1102681440372822016
According to American Enterprise Institute’s Mark Perry, “four of the top five outbound states (Illinois ranked No. 46, Connecticut at No. 49, New Jersey at No. 48, and California at No. 47) were among the five US states with the highest tax burden — New York was No. 50 (highest tax burden).”
The problem with this migration is that too many of those moving to Republican enclaves like Florida and Texas bring their liberal politics with them, threatening to turn their new homes into the same tax hell they fled.
This exodus of taxpayers is happening at a record pace and is playing havoc on Blue state budgets.
And it’s likely to only increase as a result of the GOP’s recent tax reform, as explained by economists Art Laffer and Steve Moore in a column for the Wall Street Journal:
Over the past decade, about 3.5 million Americans on net have relocated from the highest-tax states to the lowest-tax ones. …Our analysis of IRS data on tax returns shows that in the past three years alone, Texas and Florida have gained a net $50 billion in income and purchasing power from other states, while California and New York have surrendered a net $23 billion. […]
Now that the SALT subsidy is gone, how bad will it get for high-tax blue states? Very bad. We estimate, based on the historical relationship between tax rates and migration patterns, that both California and New York will lose on net about 800,000 residents over the next three years—roughly twice the number that left from 2014-16. Our calculations suggest that Connecticut, New Jersey and Minnesota combined will hemorrhage another roughly 500,000 people in the same period. …the exodus could puncture large and unexpected holes in blue-state budgets.
Ocasio-Cortez is proud of her daughter and said the way the Bronx freshman is being portrayed by the right is “a little bit too much.”
“Frankly, I try not to look at social media,” she told the Daily Mail. “There are crazy people out there, unfortunately, who believe everything they read.”
“Some in the media, especially Fox News, look for anything they can find to criticize Alexandria. They don’t even check the facts.”
As for her daughter being a democratic socialist, she isn’t owning up to that.
“She wasn’t raised to be a socialist,” Blanca insisted. “That’s not how Puerto Ricans are. That’s not what we do. Socialists are in Cuba or Venezuela. Besides, anyone who tries to help little people like me is branded a socialist.”
Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story from Twitter:
Yup.
Her mother skipped town to save $9K a year, but @AOC thinks high net worth individuals won’t skip the country to save themselves millions.
— JoeBags (@JoeBags720) March 5, 2019
And then she’s going to vote for the taxes to get raised there too ?
— Cade Royal (@royal_cade) March 4, 2019
Everything she does is like an episode of Seinfeld.
— Jordan Riddle (@jordanriddle22) March 4, 2019
Too bad she raised a complete moron with an unfortunately high level of confidence…#ParentsMatter
— Console Contempt (@ConsoleContempt) March 4, 2019
Sadly they are going to try to take their blue high tax government control of everything including gun control to Florida. Just watch the elections the next few years. Red states are being invaded by blue birds
— CaydeWallace (@CaydeWallace) March 4, 2019
Mom was sick of paying huge taxes to support the “ unwilling to work“ masses in her daughter’s district
— Jim Coonan (@coonan_james) March 4, 2019
Mom doesn’t want to work for Amazon, eh?
— Matthew McGarvey (@mattymcgaaavey) March 5, 2019
Ain’t capitalism grand for some. But I’m certain democratic socialism isn’t promising suburban-like comfort for the masses. I used to sit in meetings listening to DSA leaders who all had comfortable jobs — some tenured professors. It was Animal Farm come to life.
— Michael Benjamin (@SquarePegDem) March 5, 2019
She evidently understands budget and economy better than Ocrazio.
— Angela Rose (@angerose56) March 4, 2019
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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