The “Support Rich People” Tax

The candidacy of Republican-turned-Democrat? Ben Westlund for state Treasurer has brought out the fans of a sales tax at Blue Oregon, as it has done before, and before.

Jeff Alworth, one of the editors at BO, points to a post at the Oregon Economics Blog, which in a follow-up to the discussion there describes one of the factors that should be taken into account in a discussion of sales and income taxes:

2- However, income taxes that are too high can (and apparently do) influence weathier households’ location decisions and can make it harder for businesses to hire in a national job market.

And I just have to wonder what twisted system people want to get into to advocate poor people taking some of the tax burden off of rich people, in order to attract more rich people to the state. That seems like a negative-sum game to me.

I’ve got lots of comments (in some cases duplicated because of a problem at BO) and documentation on the regressivity and volatility of the sales tax. More stuff every time they drag me back into this.