I own a company that makes cabinets and started from scratch in Los Angeles. I employed 25 people and provided health insurance to them..I could not take CA anymore so I closed my business and am going to reopen in TN. another 25 people on the dole in CA and about 1.2 M in taxes leaving that state..congrats for driving me out of CA.

Yes, property taxes in Texas are high because you guys have no state income taxes. Local taxes are going to be collected on way or another mostly to pay for schools and local government.

I am not a millionaire and certainly not loving the millionaire lifestyle but my combined economy would be hovering close to the 200k solution. If you want to tax the rich then tax them. Those that make over 1.5 million a year in income. That's a good start. Taking those higher that make only 200k plus is not a good option.

Clark likes to hold up Texas as a beaming example of a low tax high return state. He views the state as being low tax and pro-business. But in the late 80's I remember all those half-finished homes in Houston when the oil prices collapsed. Texas has a long history of boom to bust. And today, the Texas economy is highly driven by oil and gas related industries just as years ago. This makes Texas a bit of an anomaly when compared to other states. Saying Texas is having people move to it because of favorable tax treatment is a hasty conclusion and illogical. People are moving to Texas because gas and oil prices are still historically high and jobs are to be had in Texas by the oil and gas industry. People are leaving California due to proposition 13 and job losses. Particularly young people who do not own a house and whose parent's do not own a house in California.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%281978%29

What are you doing for a living and what's your worth???!!!

It is amazing to me the lack of understanding of basic economics by some of you people who listen to Clark Howard. First of all, for those that want to "tax the heck out of the rich," you need some simple explanations. 80% of all millionaires have earned their money in their lifetime (no one gave it to them or they were not lottery winners). 2/3s of those own small businesses. So if you soak these eeeevil rich, you will hurt the poor. Why??? How many poor people do you know that hire people. It is obvious to anyone that small businesses hire almost all the newly created jobs in the last 10 years. You take away capital (especially now with credit hard to come by), small businesses will either delay hiring or lay people off.

Why do many of you care what others make??? Is it because it makes you realize that you are a failure in the free market economy, or that you are have no value beyond what a union arbitrarily tells you your worth. For those of you who were vastly overpaid in the auto industry, your area of "expertise" will not come back anytime soon. You need to retrain your skills and get ready for the next century, not waiting for the last century to come back. 40 hour work weeks are for losers, go to school, get skills, work a BS job, and provide for yourself and your family. Otherwise, you are just like a leach.

Harsh but true!

hey clark, where does TEXAS get a lot of it's state revenue? OIL, they tax oil that is exported to other states. so people in the other 48 states,alaska does the same thing, help support people in texas.

how about california using it's NATURAL RERSOURCE, their ports and the entry points from mexico, to balance it's budget, they could put a USERS FEE on everyting that is brought into california. they could balance their budget and have a surplus like alaska and give money back to it's people.

don't talk to me about texas being a low tax state, when all they are doing is exploiting a natural resource to benefit only the people of texas. i though we the UNITED STATES of america. one country for all the people.

Class envy is a common tool of manipulation by politicians, but it always ends up having the opposite effect than was intended.

Taxing the rich never works long-term because of several simple dynamics:

1) The core problem (overspending, budget deficits, corruption, etc) are not fixed and continue unabated.

2) The "rich" pass on the tax cost to the "poor" by reducing income and/or costs to maintain status quo. Many comments above illustrate several possible paths (reduce employment, delay business expansions, move overseas or to lower tax areas, manipulations of the tax codes, etc).

3) The overall effect is a decrease in revenue at state and federal level which leads to higher taxes and the cycle continues.

The way to improve the economics is to reduce tax burdens to stimulate business expansions and higher employment. History has shown this over and over.

I suggest reading Atlas Shrugged.

I own a service business with 15 full time employees - my numbers vary based on demand. However when I have a significant increase in my costs (such as a recent increase in workmans comp) then I simply reduce my payroll - its the same for taxes - we would be so much better off if we went to a consumption based tax vs a payroll tax - there is a huge "cash only" market out there that is not being taxed.

I'll tell you who: small business owners, that's who. Tax their profits even more and they will either move or do something else for a living, which leaves employees out on their own. How does this help anyone? Worse, politicians usually just waste that extra tax money on even bigger government. Again, how does this help anyone?

One unintended result of all this mess is that average Joes and Janes are stepping up to run for office out of sheer disgust for the way things are now being run. Meg Whitman here in CA is a good example. We need better leadership, not more idiot politicians that ignore the will of the people.

I use to believe that the wealthy created jobs in America and at one point it may have been true. Now the wealthy create jobs for China and Korea because of greed for insane profits. So don't be surprised when instead of Idaho that they just leave the country.

Look here Mr. Ed T. I never said I was a genuis and don't call me an IDIOT! I just know that I have been out of work and for a long time and am paying no income tax now. I have been in the auto and housing industry which both crashed and I expect the government sector and healthcare industry to crash too if people continue to loose jobs. The rich will pay anyway cause they have the money and I don't and I would love for them to end up jobless and poor too. The rich can live anywhere but if they work (say as an actor in Hollywood)in California they will pay California state income tax. And another thing I hate paying for the bank CEO's bonus and helping to shore up those banks and their share holders. Those banks should have FAILED and the stock holders lost their money and the CEOs fired and out on their cans. What is going on now is not capitalism but the well off class helping the wealthy to stay wealthy. And it all started under Bush with Bear Sterns. So I say again tax the heck out of them.

Dave, rich people can live pretty much where they want to. If you abuse them enough, they will pack up and leave. So what you say? Well consider this Mr. Smart Guy, in our progressive tax system, wealthy people, the top 1%, pay about 25% of the taxes. That means if just half of them get fed up and leave, taxes for geniuses like you will have to go up 20%-30% to make up the difference. How do you like them "spread the wealth around" apples?

It's no just the rich who are leaving high-tax states. High taxes contribute to a higher cost of living, and the middle class gets hit with that. Between 2001 and 2006, my daughter-in-law had 3 aunts (with husbands and kids) flee California (2 families from L.A., 1 from San Diego) for a much lower cost-of-living in Houston.