Earlier in the month I shared my thoughts on the LeBron James situation. LeBron's move to Florida, as I noted, saves him several million dollars annually due to Florida's more favorable tax climate. State and local taxes in Florida are extremely taxpayer friendly in Florida, especially when compared to states like Ohio which are less friendly to entrepreneurs such as King James.
Counterproductive public policies like high state taxes are often shielded from public scrutiny because a single individual's decision to move to Florida is rarely news. In the case of a high profile individual like LeBron, however, the media attention is inescapable. Conservative pundits predicted James' move to Florida long before it occurred, citing specifically the boost to James' bottom line in so doing. This happens with businesses, too, by the way. Recall a few short years ago when Honda elected to build a new facility in Greensburg, Indiana rather than proposed sites in Ohio; Indiana has a much more favorable business climate.
Jim Prevor in The Weekly Standard draws a parallel between the poor public policies that led James to move South with the concept of "food desserts," or areas of the country where people live more than a mile from a supermarket. First Lady Michelle Obama adopted the issue of food desserts as a key priority in her efforts, noting that 23.5 million people are affected by this food access issue. Prevor wisely notes that Mrs. Obama's plan includes subsidizing businesses for opening groceries in the inner cities and other affected areas, rather than "facing up to the public policy problem," causing the food desserts in the first place, namely higher cost of doing business. "She is looking to spend money directly to de facto compensate individual retailers for these high costs of doing business – and doing nothing to resolve the root problem."
Read Prevor's article; it's one of the best economic policy articles I've read in a long time.
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