“Besides Mississippi,” observes William Voegeli, “every one of the 17 states with the lowest state and local tax levels had positive net internal migration from 2000 to 2007.” Voegeli continues: “Except for Wyoming, Maine, and Delaware, every one of the 17 highest-tax states had negative net internal migration over the same period. Conservative researchers’ technical explanation for this phenomenon is: ‘Well, duh.’”

Voegeli, writing in the latest issue of City Journal, considers California to be the prime example of what’s wrong with the high-tax, high-spend model of state government: California’s annual per capita revenues of $11,160 is the fourth highest among the 50 states, but California doesn’t actually deliver better services for that money. For instance, California spends 40 percent more per capita and 12 percent more on education per public school pupil than does Texas, yet its students are one to two years worth of learning behind Texas students, according to a report issued earlier this year by McKinsey & Company.

As Voegeli puts it, “the dues paid to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.” He notes, for example, that the state legislature enacted almost none of the 1,200 recommendations issued by the California Performance Review. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger—elected on a wave of public furor over the state’s fiscal woes—established this advisory body in 2003 to find ways to make California government smarter, cheaper, and better. Those recommendations were an opportunity to save the taxpayers $32 billion over the first five years, yet the legislature ignored the many recommendations to eliminate boards and commissions because those bodies “provide golden parachutes to politicians turned out of the state legislature by California’s strict term limits.” The legislature has also refused to rein in state employee pensions, which a 2005 Legislative Analyst’s Office report found “surpassed the other states—often significantly—at all retirement ages.” According to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, the state pays 5,115 retired managers, state administrators, public university deans, and police chiefs pensions of at least $100,000 per year.