The Fat Cats’ Veto | National Review Online

The Fat Cats’ Veto | National Review Online: People will come, and people will go, and that’s the natural state of things. But the inescapable fact, unfair as it may seem, is that the people with the highest incomes are almost by definition those in highest demand; they are the easiest to lose, and the ones that it hurts a city — or a country — most to lose. While we may not be inclined to weep for the private-jet set, it is worth keeping in mind that a great many of our so-called fat cats got fat starting and running businesses. In 2011, an average of nearly five businesses a week left California, 28 from Orange County alone, seven of which relocated to or expanded in Texas. It is almost always popular to promise to raise taxes on the fat cats, and the crude arithmetic of democratic politics means that it is usually profitable to promise to tax a wealthy minority and give the money to a less-wealthy majority. A majority may very well vote for such redistribution — moving is the fat cats’ veto. And as dysfunctional, Democrat-dominated cities around the country have seen, it becomes the middle class’s veto, too.