Friday, February 2, 2018

The Republican Tax Bill Could Turn Texas Into a Blue State



Here is more evidence that Trump and Trump fanboys have no depth to their thinking.

They all hailed the end of the SALT deductions and limits on interest rate deduction as a great way to punish high tax blue states.

I pointed out at EconomicPolicyJournal.com several times that such a move would actually hurt red states. See, for example, my November 17, 2017 article: Red States May Suffer Blowback From Elimination of Local and State Tax Deductibility Designed to Hurt Blue States.

Now, The New York Times has spotted just the trend I warned about. They call it an "unanticipated" consequence, maybe by them, Trump and his fanboys but not me.

From NYT:
Every major policy overhaul has unanticipated consequences, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be no exception. One tantalizing possibility for this one: The Republican tax overhaul helps Democrats in the midterm and 2020 elections by bringing forward the date at which a few critical states — Georgia and possibly even Texas — flip from red to blue.

How might this happen? It stems from the new caps on the home mortgage interest and state and local tax deductions. Restrictions on building have pushed up the costs of housing in expensive coastal blue-state cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. High income and property taxes piled onto exorbitant rents and mortgage payments amount to cost-of-living force fields that already deflect talented workers to relatively affordable red-state cities, like Phoenix, Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C.

The tax act’s ceiling on deductions is likely to make many blue-state metro areas even more expensive — at least in the short run.

With the Republican changes to the tax code, the high-cost dynamic that has effectively redistributed some probable Democratic voters from left-leaning to right-leaning states will be thrown into overdrive...
 [R[ed states with high rates of domestic in-migration such as Arizona, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida are very likely adding Democrats faster than Republicans — even when taking into account flows of retirees seeking warm Southern weather.
Bottom line Trump is a dumb statist who is making the country more lefty Democratic by the hour.

Trump is not playing three-dimensional chess. He is playing tic tac toe on a chessboard and his trying to figure out why there are so many rows.

 -RW

33 comments:

  1. Certainly an interesting thing to keep an eye on for the next few years

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  2. The tax bill has little to do with that. Demographics are the main reason. Texas is heavily influence by Hispanics, which are by culture socialist leaning. We also have heavy influence of other poor countries including Africans and Indians, which are also left leaning. A country is as good as its people

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    Replies
    1. Re: Austro-AnCap,

      ─ Texas is heavily influence by Hispanics, which are by culture socialist leaning. ─

      Liar.

      Delete
    2. Re: Austro-AnCap,

      ─ A country is as good as its people ─

      What does that say about a people that lets its government bomb the sh*t out of other countries' peoples, families, wedding parties (those drones were especially fond of wedding parties) and makeshift hospitals manned by volunteers? Can I say the same thing about the US, that a "country is as good as its people"?

      Mind your words, sir. You would be throwing stones in a glass home.

      Delete
  3. It's been said before by other commenters on this site, but I am struck by how RW and the NYT posit intra-state immigration as a threat to Repubs in "red" states but don't see the same threat happening when immigrants from other countries with different political structures immigrate to the US as a whole. Quite a nasty contradiction there.

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    Replies
    1. I advocate the immigration of undocumented, not voters.

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    2. Interesting parse but much of the controversy rests upon one begetting the other, especially when one party/faction sees it in their electoral interest.

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    3. A distinction without a difference, as they will become citizens once granted amnesty. And we know they will be. At a minimum their children will become voters, and there are more of them.

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    4. Re: Samdrucker,

      --- their childrenbecome voters, and there are more of them. ---

      Liar. There aren't "more of them".

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    5. Wenzel likes the low prices that illegals like Francisco Torres bring in with their low wages, but doesn't have to live among them and their filthy lifestyles and criminal behavior.

      Delete
    6. Re: Paul Hansen,

      ─ Wenzel likes the low prices that illegals like Francisco Torres ─

      Leave it to a piece of rubbish lacking melanin to believe that a person with a Spanish name ha to be in the US "illegally".

      At one point, Trumpistas will become so xenophobic and paranoid they are going to start asking Native Americans if they're in the US legally.... Ooops! It HAPPENED!

      https://www.snopes.com/trump-supporters-navajo-legislator-legal/

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    7. Re: Hollow Daze,

      ─ don't see the same threat happening when immigrants from other countries with different political structures immigrate to the US as a whole. ─

      You mean like from Social-Democratic Denmark? Or from anti-gun, Socialist Australia?

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    8. @ F. Torres. Yup. Your point?

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    9. Re: Hollow Daze,

      ─ Yup. Your point? ─

      The point is that your preoccupation with the politics brought by other people seems insincere.

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    10. @F. Torres: I assure you my observations noted in the comments above are sincere. Clearly RW and the NYT think that the politics (not race or ethnicity) brought by blue staters immigrating to red states will change the politics of those red states. To accept that, I believe one must also accept that the same principles would apply to inter-national immigration as well. Just calling it like I see it.

      I suspect from your examples of Denmark and Australia that you wanted to trip me up in YOUR preoccupation, the racialist arguments proffered by Trump's supporters regarding his alleged comments about Danish immigrants being superior to Haitian or African immigrants. As I've said before, I'm not a Trumpista and never was.

      Delete
    11. Re: Hollow Daze,

      --- I believe one must also accept that the same principles would apply to inter-national immigration as well. ---

      International immigrants don't vote. Even those from Denmark.

      Again, your preoccupation is not sincere.

      Delete
  4. But if the blue states lose their baby-killing humanistic statists to red states, does that mean the anti-statist humanist libertarian and minimal state grassroots people who remain have a chance to rollback the the interventionist policies of these blue states?

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  5. We, here in Texas, are also battling the Democrat Party, and some GOP within the GOP, on the issue of property taxes. Property valuation increases are capped at 10% average in the previous 3 years. Property taxes are causing people to sell their homes. It is mostly the Republicans that are trying to get cap at 0% and let the individual subdivisions vote to have rates increase if they want an increase in revenue. The Republicans were not able to the Democrats to even cap the average to a max of 5%.
    What will turn Texas blue for sure is granting citizenship to the illegals or the more recent immigrants in general.

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    Replies
    1. Re: JamieInTexas,

      -- What will turn Texas blue for sure is granting citizenship to the illegals or the more recent immigrants in general. --

      Liar.

      Delete
    2. Re: JamieInTexas,

      Voting is an auction on future stolen goods, Jamie, and I'm no thief. Are you?

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    3. Hahaha. The answer is no, you ate not elegible to vote.

      Still an illegal alien.


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    4. Re: JamieInTexas,

      Yeah, keep those hopes up, J.

      Delete
  6. But according to libertaridian theory, magic dirt always prevails. Those leftist don't change culture or voting patterns. If we only let in a bunch of stupid turd world people with TB and corrupt practice, that can't policy change this Anglo Saxon founded government.

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    Replies
    1. They said the exact same thing when Italians, Polish, Hungarian, Czech and Russian immigrants came over on Ellis Island.

      When Anglo-Saxons in New Orleans lynched a bunch of Italian immigrants in 1891, this is what the New York Times editorial wrote

      "These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they… Lynch law was the only course open to the people of New Orleans to stay the issue of a new license to the Mafia to continue its bloody practices."

      The Italian American example is a good one. Because even though in the early 1930s they voted heavily Democrat and were a big part of big city New Deal voting blocs, today, most Italian-Americans typically lean Republican especially blue collar.

      So LM, Italians are a perfect example of an "alien" ethnicity in America which over the generations as become more conservative.

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  7. Re: The Lab Mismanager,

    ─ But according to libertaridian theory, magic dirt always prevails. ─

    I might hate saying this, but you (and cockroaches) are living proof of the above: filthy dirt DOES prevail.

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    1. I had to save this one but I can't remember who wrote it:

      "Nope. The magic dirt theory states that they will become small government, low tax libertarians because borders are illegitimate and culture is meaningless."

      When are you moving to a community with child molesting low IQ Muslim Somalis? You need to Robert Higgs with you. :LOL: You really should be a leftist Torres with your equality nonsense.

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    2. You mean like 'Little Mogadishu' in Minneapolis? An area that accounts for nearly $300 million in purchasing power and over 600 small businesses.

      http://www.startribune.com/inside-little-mogadishu-no-one-is-an-outcast/414876214/

      http://reason.com/archives/2018/01/03/war-on-terror-minnesota-somali-immigrant#comment

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    3. Oh, you mean the Africans that practice female genital mutilation?

      http://www.newsweek.com/fgm-rates-have-doubled-us-2004-304773

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  8. Robert, I'm really unclear why you think tax cuts are bad. Whatamimissing?

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    1. RW and others are right that lot of the government needs to be cut, but we know both parties are parasites. Anyway, I'll take whatever money I can keep until the great collapse.

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    2. Of course spending has to be cut. But I agree: neither party will face it until a collapse. Maybe not even then. Paper is cheap.

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  9. Does this require States to compete with the Federal government on taxes? If the state taxes are no longer deductible, will this cause a demand for lower state and local taxation?

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