Originally posted by KazetNagorra
They could both just be correlations. However, you can easily see that the author of the OP is either ignorant or dishonest by not correcting for population size when talking about economic growth. Population growth correlates with poverty, not wealth, not it's more likely that the no-income-tax states simply have more population growth (and the resulti ...[text shortened]... per capita growth, but even then you would only be able to establish correlations, not causes.
Here's a good quote from Wiki:
"The relationship between tax rates and poverty is disputed. A study comparing high tax Scandinavian countries with the U. S. suggests high tax rates are inversely correlated with poverty rates. The poverty rate, however, is low in some low tax countries such as Switzerland. A comparison of poverty rates between states reveals that some low tax states have low poverty rates. For example, New Hampshire has the lowest poverty rate of any state in the U. S., and has very low taxes (46th among all states). It is true however that in those instances, both Switzerland and New Hampshire have a very high household income and other measure to levy or offset the lack of taxation. For example, Switzerland has Universal Healthcare and a free system of education for children as young as four years old. New Hampshire has no state income tax or sales tax, but does have the nation's highest property taxes."
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High property taxes are a great way of getting to the goal of taxing "net worth" rather than income -- so kudos to New Hampshire.
A home is not an investment because it doesn't earn any income and costs a pile to maintain. The only thing that got people buying homes like crazy was deducting mortgage interest -- which is nuts. All that did was drive property prices up -- and we see where that lead.
A crazy tax code really screws your economy.