More obviously, middle-income earners in Massachusetts have learned that I-495 and I-95 leads to New Hampshire. Shoppers there know a step over the border leads to a big savings on a purchase.

The solution is to tax that which is immobile. That means a property tax, and it means one based – ideally – on land value, with the usual robust and appropriate protections for the stressed working families and the poor. Land value is created by all of us, the community, through government investment. It ought to be the primary, ideal and ethical source of tax revenue for government. Land values are owned by some the wealthiest and most privileged people in the nation, yet they pennies on the actual value in tax.

Until the end off the 1920s and 1930s all levels of government, up to the state level imposed property taxes. The diminution of the property tax is an answer given by all misguided populists from the left and the right. I find it ironic that a Robert McIntyre and a Howard Jarvis can come together, to let taxation of wages be the “go to” tax, the heck with the outcome.

The witches’ brew of sales, income and other taxes on labor and capital have impoverished those that cannot escape them. The land value tax, used to replace the outdated tax nostrums of our socialist AND free-booting capitalist past, has helped thousands of people at the local level in Pennsylvania – the revival of Harrisburg is notable – do better in their lives, and help remove some of the bricks of privilege that impede the progress of all.