Friday, February 11, 2011

People fleeing high taxes and moving to Florida


Mayor Rene Varela mentioned Wednesday night that we would be experiencing one of the most rapid growths in the next ten years. We must be reading the same articles. Most people migrate to the coast and let's hope that through our marketing of Lake Worth over the next few years, that they find our great little city and buy a property and settle here.

We have always been a State that has attracted migration from other areas. Now, more than ever, people are moving here once again. The reason? No State income tax; we eliminated our Estate tax in 2004; property is very cheap; the weather is warmer; prices of goods are less because there are fewer Union people with whom to deal; and for the most part, we are not over-crowded. Although the desire of developers is to pave over our State, they have not yet done so and we still have beautiful, untouched land that is attractive to many living in the congested cities in the North and who literally live on top of one another.

The US Immigration Bureau says, "Florida has received more than three million new residents in the last ten years; immigrants account for approximately one-third of this figure. This increase is larger than the State's entire population in 1950. " Two reasons why illegal aliens are attracted to Florida is the low cost of living and warm weather. Things should be changing in this regard as Governor Rick Scott plans on implementing E-Verify, thus opening up jobs for Florida citizens.

People, just like corporations, want to keep a bigger percentage of the money that they have and will earn. We learned that "PB County leads the State in new jobs with the strongest job growth of any of Florida's 22 metro areas, adding 6900 jobs from December 2009 to December 2010," according to Jeff Ostrowski of the PB Post. High taxes kills jobs.

The Ocean State Policy Research conducted a Study on why Rhode Islanders are heading to Florida. It says that because of the Estate Tax, the wealthy people are moving out.

The Retirement Living Information Centers says that Alaskans pay the least, 6.4 percent in 2008, but Nevada is close at 6.6 percent. In four states, the residents pay between 7 and 8 percent of their income in state and local taxes: Wyoming (7.0%), Florida (7.4%), New Hampshire (7.6%) and South Dakota (7.9%). Four other states round out the bottom 10: Tennessee (8.3%), Texas (8.4%), Louisiana (8.4%) and Arizona (8.5%).

Neil Boortz of Boortz.com says, "If individuals are willing to go to these lengths to keep more of the money they earn, imagine what corporations around the world would do if the United States did not have a corporate income tax (like in the case under the FairTax). The United States would become the Florida of the world."

Lake Worth has now appointed a Marketing and Branding task force to attract people to our City and to eventually call it "home," something that we have never done. We have so many great things in our City of which millions of people are not aware: located in Palm Beach County, on the ocean and Intra-Coastal Waterway, our own 18 hole golf-course, beautiful Bryant Park, a vibrant downtown, a highschool that recently got an A rating, building our own Reverse Osmosis plant and a 4 acre parcel of untouched land (something unheard of near the Coast) that the City has an opportunity to purchase. (I had to throw that one in!)

We are ready for achievement and prosperity. It's coming. It's not that far away.

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