Atlas Fled.

You've heard of "white flight"? Well, according to the WSJ's Opinion Journal, it seems liberal utopia California is suffering from "productivity flight."

It takes hard work to drive anyone away from California's sunshine and
scenic vistas, but politicians in Sacramento have been up to the task.

The latest Census Bureau data indicate that, in 2005, 239,416 more
native-born Americans left the state than moved in. California is also on pace
to lose domestic population (not counting immigrants) this year. The
outmigration is such that the cost to rent a U-Haul trailer to move from Los
Angeles to Boise, Idaho, is $2,090--or some eight times more than the cost of
moving in the opposite direction.

What's gone wrong? A big part of the story is a tax and regulatory
culture that treats the most productive businesses and workers as if they were
ATMs. The cost to businesses of complying with California's rules, regulations
and paperwork is more than twice as high as in other Western states.

But the worst growth killer may well be California's tax system. The
business tax rate of 8.8% is the highest in the West, and its steeply
"progressive" personal income tax has an effective top marginal rate of 10.3%,
or second highest in the nation. CalTax, the state's taxpayer advocacy group,
reports that the richest 10% of earners pay almost 75% of the entire income-tax
revenue in the state, and most of these are small0business owners, i.e., the
people who create jobs.

Do they have a sunless tanning salon at Galt's Gulch?