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Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #1385
11/04/2025
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1) New Jerseyans and New Yorkers Head to the Polls Today
We at UP do not get involved in elections, as you all know, so we are not going to in any way suggest who readers in these two should vote for.
But we do think voters should be informed on what is happening in these two states.
New York has the highest tax rates in the country and New Jersey has the third highest (behind NY and California).
The most valuable resource of a state is its people. High tax rates and progressive governance have caused a stampede of people out of these states as if a tsunami had hit the North Atlantic shores. Together, these two states have lost a net 3 million citizens over the past decade. That's five to six congressional seats that will be gone after 2030.
A line chart with the title, "New York: How many people did New York Lose? (2015-2024).
A line chart with the title, "New Jersey: How many people did New Jersey Lose? (2015-2024).
The figure below shows that personal income has poured out of these states to the tune of $700 billion cumulatively over the last decade, for which IRS personal income data is available.
Despite having among the highest taxes, both states (and New York City) have big fiscal deficits. The political class is turning to the old playbook of ruin: raise taxes on the rich.
Will the rich stick around and take another wack? Maybe. But the historical evidence shows pretty convincingly the answer to that question is a resounding: HELL NO.
A bar graph titled, "New York: Cumulative Value of AGI Losses."
A bar graph titled, "New Jersey: Cumulative Value of AGI Losses."
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2) Where Have All the IPOs Gone?
This is a point that we and our friend Norm Champ, formerly of the Securities and Exchange Commission, have made many times: we need more publicly-traded companies for mom and pop investors to invest in.
Thirty years ago, there were nearly 8,100 such companies. Last year, there were only about 4,000.
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That's a problem. An initial public offering (IPO) used to be the way companies would achieve the next stage in their growth, as it provided a new source of capital. But costly regulations (remember Sarbanes-Oxley?) have played a big role in stifling the IPO pipeline. Many companies like Continental Energy have gone from public to private.
Good news: Paul Atkins, the Trump-appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, wants to do something about this.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, he laid out elements of his agenda: reduce the pointless disclosures, exclude the politicized shareholder proposals from proxy materials, and cut down on litigation risk.
Atkins has strong free-market instincts and is dedicated to an agenda that will "make IPOs great again."
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3) No One Aboard
If we held a contest for the worst federal "investment" over the past half century, mass transit funding would certainly earn a bronze, silver, or maybe even a gold medal.
We got a sneak peak at a new analysis of transit spending and ridership called "$1.8 Trillion for Nothing," by transportation expert Randall O'Toole, who finds: "the more we spend, the fewer people who use transit."
A chart titled, "Transit costs increase, ridership stagnates or declines."
According to O'Toole:
"Transit has not relieved congestion. It hasn't reduced greenhouse gas emissions. It hasn't helped many low-income people, the vast majority of whom have their own cars and don't use transit. All this $1.8 trillion has done is enrich a few special interest groups....Transit advocates talk endlessly about the advantages of transit over driving. Americans are paying for it but they aren't using it."
Congress and the DOT should defund the mass transit programs. In many cities it would be cheaper if taxpayers simply hired an Uber driver for every transit rider and stopped the subsidies for trains and light rail that travel mostly empty. One of the worst is in Seattle where the construction costs for planned transit expansions have tripled while ridership has declined.
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4) 42 Million Americans on Food Stamps Is a National Disgrace
With the government shutdown now in its second month, the Trump administration is using contingency funds set aside for natural disasters to pay about 50% of the food stamp benefits. The program has exploded by an astonishing 40% since the Biden Administration took office in 2021.
One out of eight families in America now use taxpayer handouts to put food on the table. Not in Africa or India - in the richest country in the world!
One reason: blue states have ignored work requirements. The purple areas have essentially no work requirements.
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Not only is the Left demanding everyone who's on the program stay on it, they are insisting that there be no citizenship checks for beneficiaries. When the Agriculture Department asked the states for data to ensure illegal immigrants weren't on the program, 21 blue states refused. But even from just the 29 cooperating states, USDA found massive fraud. One person was receiving food stamps from SIX different states.
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These 21 states are no doubt stonewalling because their food stamp fraud is embarrassingly large. In the states that have reported data, we learn that many of the households receiving benefits are illegal immigrants.
Liberals have even encouraged people to go on food stamps to "stimulate the local economy."
Why in the world do we have a program that is 100% funded by the federal government but 100% administered by the states, some of whom won't even tell the federal government who is receiving benefits?
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5) Isn't 105 Years of "Emergency" Rent Control Enough?
One of the big issues in New York City has been whether the city should make its rent control laws even more stringent. The original regulations first came into being in 1920 and were called the Emergency Rent Laws. They have ensured that rental emergencies continue to this day.
As The Atlantic magazine notes ([link removed]) :
"Few policies disgust academic economists quite like rent control. In the 1970s, the Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck famously described it as the "most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city--except for bombing."
In a 2012 poll of prominent economists, just 2 percent said that rent-control laws have had "a positive impact" on the "amount and quality of broadly affordable rental housing in cities that have used them." (The Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler sarcastically proposed a follow-up survey question: "Does the sun revolve around the earth?")"
We would go one further and point out that in 1987, the Foreign Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Co Thach, disagreed with Lindbeck's famous quip. Nguyen said rent control was WORSE than bombing:
"The Americans couldn't destroy Hanoi, but we have destroyed our city by very low rents. We realized it was stupid and that we must change policy."
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6) Happy Election Day!
Humore item that reads "We don't approve of political jokes—we've seen too many get elected."
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