Taxes drive the rich to flee … again

This year, "The deep pockets of New York's rich were tapped like never before," The Associated Press reported Thursday.

"The state's wealthiest pay new higher income tax rates, higher taxes for limousines and yachts, more to enter a horse in a race and more to dabble in real estate."

That's in addition to federal income taxes, you understand. And did all this new looting of the productive class help the state government's longtime economic prospects?

No. "You heard the mantra, 'Tax the rich, tax the rich,'" Gov. David Paterson said Wednesday at a gathering of newspaper editors in Syracuse. "We've done that. We've probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state."

But aren't New York's massive tax levies just the kind of "more balanced tax structure" Carson City's big spenders yearn for?

Actually, New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch said the three-year surcharge on income taxes enacted last year isn't likely to meet budget expectations. He said Albany must look to politically difficult spending cuts, rather than more taxes, to meet a deepening shortfall now estimated at $3 billion.

Imagine that.

Buffalo Sabres owner Tom Golisano, the Paychex founder and billionaire who was paying $13,000 a day in New York income taxes, and media mogul Rush Limbaugh both became ex-New Yorkers this year.

Maybe Russians' similar experience with fleeing wealth over the past century explains why Pravda observed, last April, that "The American decent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed."

"The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama," Pravda reported. "The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left. ...

"Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the U.S. should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise 'excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence,'" the Russian daily reported.

"Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, 'Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.' "

Imagine that.