What's the matter with Connecticut?

Goodbye, Hartford, hello texas!

The Wall Street Journal offers a look at the sorry state of Connecticut.

Sad.

Connecticut’s progressive tax experiment has hit a wall. Tens of thousands of residents are fleeing for lower tax climes, which has prompted Democrats to propose—get this—paying new college grads a thousand bucks to stick around. Maybe they’re afraid an exodus of young people will turn the state Republican.

Hard to believe, but a mere 25 years ago—a lifetime for millennials—Connecticut was a low-tax haven for Northeasterners. The state enacted an income tax in 1991 that was initially a flat 4.5% but was later made steeply progressive. In 2009 former Republican Governor Jodi Rell raised the top rate on individuals earning $500,000 or more to 6.5%, which Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy has lifted to 6.99% (as if paying 0.01% less than 7% is a government discount).

Connecticut’s top tax rate is now higher than the 5.1% flat rate in the state formerly known as Taxachusetts. In 2012 the Tax Foundation ranked Connecticut’s state and local tax burden second highest in the country behind New York. Due to recent property and income tax hikes, the Nutmeg State may now be in the lead. 

You don’t need a Yale degree to figure out the tax hikes have been a disaster. A net 30,000 residents moved to other states last year. Since 2010 seven of Connecticut’s eight counties have lost population, and the hedge-fund haven of Fairfield County shrank for the first time last year. In the last five years, 27,400 Connecticut residents have moved to Florida. Florida Governor Rick Scott should pay Mr. Malloy a broker’s fee.

More than 3,000 Connecticut residents have moved to zero income-tax New Hampshire in the last two years. While liberals wax apocalyptic about Kansas’s tax cuts, the Prairie State has welcomed 1,430 Connecticut refugees since 2011 and reversed the outflow between 2005 and 2009. Yet liberals deny that tax policies influence personal or business decisions.

Full article at the link, in case you're a masochist.