Another Startling Indictment Of John Bel Edwards, Courtesy Of The IRS

Here’s something amazing from the Cato Institute, which analyzed IRS data to track interstate migration patterns and proved something we’ve all known for a while.

Which is that Louisiana is the worst place in the South for people with money to live. And it’s John Bel Edwards’ fault that this is so.



You can argue about that if you want, and you can talk about this tax rate or that regulation or whatever. But at the end of the day there is one way to measure this which is unchallengeable, and it’s this: which states do people who are high earners move to, and which states do they move from?

The IRS keeps numbers on this question, as it turns out. It measures the migration patterns of people who make more than $200,000 per year, and it also measures migration patterns of retirees.

You won’t be surprised to see what those look like. Here’s what the numbers, as presented by Cato, show on the high earners…

Here are the raw numbers the graph comes from…

And this is based on 2022 data, which is firmly embedded in Edwards’ second term.

Here’s the graph on retirees…

The numbers on retirees aren’t exactly like those of the 200K-plus people, though they’re generally similar.

And boy, do you get an obvious trend toward growth in Southern states.

Amazingly enough you even have that trend in Mississippi, which like Louisiana has net outmigration BUT, interestingly enough, is adding high earners and retirees while shedding others on net.

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So Mississippi is turning more upscale. That’s a pretty good indication what getting rid of their state income tax can do.

Louisiana? We’re just emptying out, per these numbers.

And everywhere else in the South, they’re just loading up with the wealthiest and most productive citizens streaming out of New York, Boston, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco and the other deep blue cities and states.

We don’t need to say too much more about this. It’s just more proof of what we already know. We wasted eight years of time we could have had a relative population and economic boom, like Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida, Texas and Arkansas have, and instead we’re with the worst of the blue states in emptying out.

A radical departure from Edwards’ policies is absolutely necessary. Many of our state legislators understand this. But the failure to call for a special session to fix Louisiana’s tax code was a pretty good indication that we don’t have the sense of urgency we should have right now.

This state needs to scrub away John Bel Edwards’ legacy. Thoroughly and quickly. Before there’s no one left to leave.

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