An Embarrassing Metric Disappears
Since 1991 the Internal Revenue Service has been compiling statistics on filers’ addresses, which the agency’s Statistics of Income division uses to show who is moving into and out of every county and state in the nation. As you’d expect, the IRS also knows the aggregate income levels of those who move. So the movements of the most fundamental productive components of the economy — taxpayers — can be analyzed by journalists and economists, or could until now.
Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Which brings me back to the fiscal cliff. Raising taxes on the top 2%, or the rich, or however you wish to define it, is simply NOT going to raise the expected revenue claimed by those who wish to raise it.
