The “cause” is Greed, not the tax code.

In the broadest, most general, most obvious case, people are choosing to flee rather than be theft victims.

Of course. It's not just the problem of excessive taxes or tax rates, the resulting evasion of which has been judiciously addressed at least as far back as by Adam Smith. (Cigarette taxers nowadays, those who want them hyper-taxed for PC reasons, you are again warned; take note, if you can and will.) It's also the underlying attitudes and “climate,” no different than how people view “climate” for business and job creation, which is why Blue Nation so often counts people and jobs among their greatest exports.

People are often ready and willing to vote NO with their feet against misconduct by state governments. It's Gresham's Law applied to the economy and society. The bad people (and bad government) drive away the good.

This has been a problem not only with older, ailing eastern Blue (Cyanide) Nation states and central cities for ages, but also for “Massachusetts Lite” California, where push factors are so often primarily motivating the “spinoff” of people and jobs from California to the rest of the western USA, and sometimes farther east.

The activists (ignoring constitutional federalism in all ways, including culturally and philosophically), who are greedy and angry, want, as has been described, to make avoidance impractical by expanding the scope of jurisdiction to the federal government, nation-wide. Or the feds independently choose to be bad.

So those who can, move their stuff offshore.

It's Gresham's Law in effect, once again.

If you think bad government and income taxation and avoidance-and-evasion is bad now, just wait and see if extremists someday push for and secure a wealth tax in addition an income tax in this country (which would be progressive, naturally, to correspond fully to the thorough injustice, envy, and resentment there).

Yes, the objects of hatred are crooks, but given the nature of government in so many cases like this and in so many other instances, it's worth reiterating my wistful reaction sometimes, that we can feel not only sympathetic with, say, the S&L crooks, but given the nature of the Dems and lefties so often, we can actually cheer these tax-fleeing folks heartily, hoping they're cruising the Caribbean or the South Pacific with their attractive young crew-mates of the moment.

I applaud the efforts to bring in these tax evaders, but as long as our corporate tax codes are so out of whack with the norms for industrialized nations, we are likely to see this type of practice continue on a grand scale. It wont disappear if we do so, but it will probably decrease.