[tmitchell]

Whoa, fix your headline there.

FTA: "Their agreement, which could go before the full Legislature within days, does not include any broad-based tax increases, relying instead on deep cuts in government services, borrowing and accounting maneuvers to wipe out the deficit."

I'll be interested to see how this pans out. Cutting services is really the only play. Increased taxes would just lead to decreased consumption, and with unemployment continuing to rise, expect to see income tax receipts to come up way short.

[jrockway]

Cutting services is really the only play.

It's OK to cut government services benefiting the poor as long as the millionaires don't have to become nine-hundred-thousandaires. They earned that money, and I'll be damned if they have to share it with the society that helped them get that far!

[jpcx01]

Just doesnt work. The millionaire will move and then the state wont get a dime from him.

[mixmax]

This is an often quoted argument, but in reality it doesn't happen as much as you would think. Millionaires are people too, and they care about their friends and family living close by, the city they live in, etc.

If this were true we would have no millionaires in Denmark where we have a personal top tax rate of 65%. And we have quite a few. Even a few billionaires.

[jrockway]

Maybe? But housing prices are already way higher in California (SF/LA) than they are in, say, Illinois (Chicago). If people are so concerned about money, why doesn't everyone move to rural Kansas?

(Because California has nicer weather and better infrastructure, among other things.)