> Poring over the available data, Case discovered that plenty of Midwestern and Southwestern cities were leveraging tax incentives to stanch local brain drain, and a few, such as Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, were cultivating their own robust startup scenes.
Tax incentives means competing on price, which is a loser in the long run. Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money invested in the society itself.
> “We have a lot of quality-of-life advantages: not a lot of congestion, good restaurants, low home prices,” he said. “It’s a place where a young family won’t bankrupt themselves buying a house with a yard.”
* Not a lot of congestion just means they have car-dominant sprawl that hasn't hit a huge economic boom yet. That's a downside to me.
* Somehow I really doubt their restaurants are significantly better than the bay area, NYC, or Boston.
* Home prices aren't so much a quality of life advantage as a cost of living advantage.
> Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money invested in the society itself
Or, perhaps the Laffer Curve? Maybe revenue actually increases? Look at Texas: huge budget surpluses and lower taxes and public schools ranked higher than California.
I am not trying to debate which state is better, but I am trying to make the point that lower taxes does not correlate to a lower quality state. A poorer state does correlate: such as Mississippi for example, but low tax “rich” states do just fine.
Yes, but look at what usually happens. For example, most of the top 10 GDP per capita states are blue (and the ones that aren't are tiny petro states), while most of the bottom 10 GDP per capita states are red. This directly contradicts the conservative mantra of "low taxes spurs economic growth", if anything it looks like the opposite is true.
> I am not trying to debate which state is better, but I am trying to make the point that lower taxes does not correlate to a lower quality state.
Well, "quality" is a pretty subjective word, but it does seem to generally lead to certain things being worse, like social safety nets, education, etc.
For example, in the case of Texas, it also has an insanely high maternal mortality rate, and while public schools there may outrank California's, California has an extremely strong public university system.
Tax incentives means competing on price, which is a loser in the long run. Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money invested in the society itself.
> “We have a lot of quality-of-life advantages: not a lot of congestion, good restaurants, low home prices,” he said. “It’s a place where a young family won’t bankrupt themselves buying a house with a yard.”
* Not a lot of congestion just means they have car-dominant sprawl that hasn't hit a huge economic boom yet. That's a downside to me.
* Somehow I really doubt their restaurants are significantly better than the bay area, NYC, or Boston.
* Home prices aren't so much a quality of life advantage as a cost of living advantage.