States Americans Want to Flee Kind of Suck on Freedom and Taxes

Lots of Americans want to get the hell out of
wherever they are—half of Illinois residents wish they lived
elsewhere, and almost as many Connecticut and Maryland residents
share similar sentiments. I’ve been to those places and, frankly,
who can blame them?

But as unerring as my judgment is on such matters, there are
more concrete reasons to put distance between yourself and the
White Sox or Martin O’Malley’s haunts in Annapolis. Checking the
list of states where people don’t want to be against similar lists
of states that suck on freedom and taxes finds some interesting
correlations.

According to Gallup, an average of 33 percent of any state’s
residents want to move across the state line. But roughly half of
Illinois and Connecticut residents, and nearly as many (47 percent)
of Maryland residents want to hit the road.

As it turns out, residents in
all three states appear toward the top of an earlier Gallup poll of
those who think their state taxes are too damned high. With average
state tax disgruntlement standing at 50 percent across the union,
76 percent of Connecticut residents say they’re overtaxed, as do 71
percent of Illinois residents and 67 percent of Maryland residents.

And, in fact, a
WalletHub ranking of states by the degree to which they tax
their residents finds a remarkable degree of correlation between
the two. Illinois comes in at 47 on the list (the higher the
number, the worse the gouging)—38 when you adjust for cost of
living. Connecticut ranks at 48 (49 adjusted), and Maryland ranks
at 41 (44 adjusted).

Hmmm.

But that doesn’t mean it’s all about the money. There’s also an
interesting correlation between states people want to see in the
rearview mirror, and states poorly ranked for personal and economic
freedom by the Mercatus Center. Mercatus scores each state on over
200 issues including tax burden, property rights, marijuana laws,
gun restrictions, government spending, occupational licensing,
marriage freedom, and many more concerns.

Obviously, the final results of such rankings depend to some
extent on how you weight each type of freedom, and there’s a lot of
subjectivity inherent in such comparisons. But using Mercatus’s
default score,
Illinois ranks at 45 out of the 50 states in terms of freedom,
Connecticut comes in at 40, and Maryland takes its place at 44.

Gee. Places that boss you around and charge heavily for the
privilege tend to send people drifting toward the exit? Who would
have guessed?

Correlation across the lists is not exact. Some states rank
poorly on both personal freedom and taxes, and yet hold the
affection of their residents. For example, only 23 percent of
Hawaiians want to leave the state behind even though it’s at 47 on
the freedom index and 48 on the tax list, once adjusted for cost of
living. Perhaps awesome surfing and a gorgeous climate can offset a
host of other annoyances.

If that’s the trick, that’s going to be a tough model for
Illinois to emulate.

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