‘If you tax them, they will leave’ | The Weekly Standard

‘If you tax them, they will leave’ | The Weekly Standard: "If the citizens of New Jersey like candor, Chris Christie is the governor they’ve been waiting for. Or I should say citizens of “the failed state” of New Jersey, as he tends to call it. It’s a “broken state” and a state that’s “broke.” New Jersey was in “a shambles,” he says, when he became governor in January. It’s “a fiscal basket case,” suffering from the “madness” of tax increases and excessive government spending, a “wonderful state” that’s been brought to “the edge of bankruptcy” and faces “the ruination” of its economy and “the quality of life that we want all of our citizens to have.” New Jersey has “deceitful politics,” and “the defenders of the status quo .  .  . yell and scream” and “demonize” those, like Christie, who seek change.

The state’s misery is quantifiable, and Christie routinely quantifies it in his speeches. His budget address in March to a joint session of the state legislature—controlled by Democrats—included this riff:

New Jersey residents are the most over-taxed in the country. We have one of the highest top marginal in-come tax rates, the second highest sales tax rate, the sixth highest corporate tax rate, and the highest property taxes in the nation. Add it all up, and the sad fact is that we are number one with more state and local taxes taken as a percentage of income than any other state in America. This is one distinction I am prepared to give up."