Americans exiting for jobs

Dec. 3, 2012

By John Seiler

I was reading about how, in the late 1980s during the Reagan prosperity, there was a shortage of workers. The top federal income tax rate was 28 percent. In California, the top state rate was 9.3 percent. Combined: 37.3 percent.

Today, there remains mass unemployment under the Bush-Obama big-government policies. Top federal income tax rate: 35 percent, and maybe rising. Top state tax rate: 13.3 percent. Combined: 48.3 percent, and maybe rising.

Now, workers from America are moving to other countries to find jobs:

“After applying for 279 jobs over two years, my husband finally got the offer he’d been hoping for: a well-paid position teaching philosophy at a respected university. We should have been thrilled. There was just one little thing.

“The job was in Hong Kong.

“’I feel like we’re being deported from our own country,’ my husband said.

“’It’ll be an adventure,’ I replied, trying to sound game.

“’I wasn’t looking for an adventure,’ he said. ‘I was just looking for a job.’…

“Stories like ours are everywhere.”

In Hong Kong, the top income tax rate is only 15 percent — less than one third what it is Taxifornia.

In the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom 2012, Hong Kong is tops, with an 89.9 ranking (of 100), a “free” rating.

But the United States is way down the list, at No. 10, with a 76.3 ranking, “mostly free.”

California isn’t ranked separately. But if it were, it would be ranked around 55, “mostly unfree,” at the level of Greece (55.4), another area with a beautiful climate and a profligate, bankrupt government.

Time to get a plane ticket to Asia.