Sunday, July 08, 2012

California was a friend of mine. Maryland, you are no California.

 California may be able to get away with constantly increasing taxes, because it's beautiful.  Or would be, except for the fact that it's full of Californians.  

 But Maryland?  The urban parts are a dungheap.  Now wonder people are baling out.  Maryland apparently wants to be the new Michigan.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's also the fact that California's major population centers are all several hundred miles from the state line. (I'm not counting the SD/TJ international border). In contrast the best parts of Maryland are in the same labor market as Virginia.

Elasticity is a function of substitutability.

Mungowitz said...

Much of the diaspora is emigration from Baltimore. Which is a dungheap.

Anonymous said...

But Maryland does have their basketball team, about which you have shared your fondness...

James Oswald said...

MD has a short commute to DC, and DC has jobs.

John Thacker said...

One can commute to DC jobs from Virginia as well.

Maryland's problem is that despite being extremely wealthy, taxes are higher than Virginia and NC but unlike those two states, there's very little evidence of what it gets spent on. Infrastructure and road spending is nonexistent compared to Virginia and North Carolina. All the money goes to state and local government employees and their pensions.

While Baltimore is bad, the people leaving are from Montgomery (a very wealthy county) and Prince George's County (the home of the black middle and upper middle class as well as UMd.)

John Thacker said...

For the time being, though, Maryland is very wealthy, especially Montgomery County, and can afford a lot of ruin. If it reaches a tipping point, however, watch out.