A woman around age 30 who works for Cleveland Clinic here (yes, I know that it sounds like a contradiction, but Cleveland Clinic has a massive operation in SE Florida) shared her Floridian Origin Story. She and her now-husband came to Fort Lauderdale on vacation in 2020 and discovered that it was possible for young people to enjoy a mask-free lockdown-free lifestyle without being felled by SARS-CoV-2. The couple packed up and moved and never looked back to their deep roots in Massachusetts (the now-wife had grown up in a house that her grandparents purchased and her parents still live there).
How much tax base was lost via the transformation from Massachusetts to Maskachusetts? The immediately loss was modest, only about 5 percent of perhaps $250,000 in joint income or $12,500 per year in state income tax. Figure another $2,000 in lost sales tax and $5,000 per year in lost property tax (whether the couple had rented or purchased). A total of $20,000 per year.
What’s the long tail? The parents are executives back in MA and they’re approaching retirement age. They are planning to keep their house on Cape Cod, but live in Florida for most of the year so that they can spend time with their daughter and any grandkids. If the daughter hadn’t been driven to Florida by the lockdowns, mask orders, vaccine orders, etc., the parents wouldn’t have followed. The state will likely lose at least another $40,000 per year in tax receipts and won’t get the state estate tax that they’d hoped to harvest from the dead bodies of the parents. (See Effect on children’s wealth when parents move to Florida.)
Although Florida lacks both income and estate taxes, these folks are contributing to the Florida economy and tax base by living here. Thus, it seems that Ron DeSantis’s decision to reject Faucism and follow the Church of Sweden will pay financial dividends to the state for many decades to come.
Loosely related, sunset approaches at Pine Glades Natural Area, about 20 minutes from Abacoa.
Phil, this is such interesting news! Because I am the Leading Global Scholar of Black Studies Plagiarism, my mathematical skills are naturally lacking (only so many hours in a day, and my trips to the local bank to deposit my $1.5m salary checks take time!), I had some difficulty following your calculations.
But, here’s my question, which requires your advanced mathematics skills. Is it possible that the loss of tax dollars to Massachusetts from these Jail-breakers is actually more than offset by the increase in my tiny salary over the same period? As you know well, my salary is not befitting of someone of my reputation and stature, but it has risen from $879,079 in 2020 to over $1.5m in the most recent period. Your thoughts?
Prof. Gay: Thank you so much for all of the important research results that you’ve brought to our attention even if, like Albert Einstein (who copied from his wife Mileva Marić), they’re not exactly “your results”. Harvard made $11 billion in investment returns last year, not least due to the evil greedy Elon Musk and his government-dependent SpaceX company that plagiarized so much from our great NASA. At a minimum, half of the $11 billion should have been paid to you.