High-tax states drive out residents -- duh!

Taxes in Xew Jersey obviated my ever owning a home there ($15,000 per year on an ordinary split level), so I pulled out of my beautiful $750/month ghetto apartment and moved to Dixie. 23 years later, it's both gratifying and aggravating to see the status of the problem.

http://teapartyupdate.com/this-surprising-thing-that-happens-to-states-who-raise-taxes/
This is What Happens to States that Raise Taxes

They focus on Connecticut, a state that should be white-picket-fence New England perfection. "Earlier this week, the Nutmeg State’s legislature approved a collection of new taxes to close a two-year, $40 billion budget to help pay the multibillion-dollar tab to repair and replace the state’s dilapidated roads and bridges. The package includes a 50-cent-per-pack hike in cigarette taxes and a bump in tax rates on corporations and the state’s wealthiest earners" -- will you kindly tell me what they're doing with state funds if roads and bridges are falling down? ROADS AND BRIDGES are the average shmoe's first idea of what taxes are for -- with some justification!

"The Ex-patriot movement consists of Americans who have grown weary of increasing taxes and have moved elsewhere to slough off the tough tax burden associated with living in the U.S." The pun is no doubt unintentional, but rich! Clearly they meant to say expatriate, but many expatriates are for sure ex-patriots too. The oath you take to renounce citizenship is pretty serious stuff, but sometimes I feel ready to take it any old time. Finding an affordable country that doesn't hate ameriKans with good reason, there's the rub.

So happens we heard from one of our own experts on the subject at two recent PN meetings -- Dr. Steven Yates. The news is mostly good, very good, in his new homeland of Chile -- except that the elongated country's latest "massive" earthquake was in a city long touted as an ideal expat destination:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Iquique_earthquake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcowbQ67W6M

Pretty sure Iquique is the city with no water of its own, where all water is piped to town from 90 miles away. How'd you like to get caught there the day the pipes finally rupture? I'm so negative, huh.

/\/.\/\/.