Afternoon Must-Read: David Cay Johnston: State’s Job Growth Defies Pessimistic Predictions After Tax Increases

David Cay Johnston: State’s Job Growth Defies Pessimistic Predictions After Tax Increases: “Dire predictions about jobs being destroyed…

…spread across California in 2012 as voters debated whether to enact the sales and, for those near the top of the income ladder, stiff income tax increases in Proposition 30. Million-dollar-plus earners face a 3 percentage-point increase on each additional dollar.

It hurts small business and kills jobs,” warned the Sacramento Taxpayers Association, the National Federation of Independent Business/California, and Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee.

So what happened?… Last year California added 410,418 jobs, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2012, significantly better than the 1.8 percent national increase in jobs. California is home to 12 percent of Americans, but last year it accounted for 17.5 percent of new jobs, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows…. Eleven California counties, including Sacramento, accounted for almost 1 in every 7 new jobs in the U.S. last year…. Only three California counties lost jobs…. The empirical evidence also shows that the best-paying jobs tend to be clustered in states (and countries) with high taxes. The same tends to be true of wealth creators, including the most money-motivated among scientists, and existing wealth holders not actively engaged in business…. So next time someone tries to tell you that raising income taxes will destroy jobs, tell them the evidence just does not support that claim.