Where has opportunity gone?

While we wait to get a copy of the actual final Senate bill - Last week Senator Harry Reid was reportedly debating another proposed tax increase on those earning more than $250,000 per year to pay for the Senate healthcare proposal; it now appears to have been included in the final version. This time it is an increase in the Medicare payroll tax rate. [NYTimes]


It is extremely popular these days for politicians to consider taxing high income earners. This is perhaps not the wisest move from a tax standpoint, since the top 1% paid 39% of all individual income taxes according to CNN. Let us consider why most people or their families immigrated to this country in the first place – it was the land of opportunity.

Economist Richard Florida wrote about this phenomenon in his critically acclaimed book The Rise of the Creative Class, which describes the immigrant draw of cities like Pittsburgh in the industrial age. His sequel, The Flight of the Creative Class is a must read for any thinking person today. [For a taste, read the brief in the Harvard Business Review.] He calls the doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, architects, artists, musicians and professors the creative class. He says that it is America’s openness to new people, ideas and the opportunity to succeed that attracted the world’s talent to our shores. He also documents the social change that has occurred in this country over the last 20 years and the reasons why America appears to have lost some of its luster. Now, it seems our politicians are determined to punish our most productive workers. The question is, if this country continues down this path, why should the creative class remain here? These are people with desirable transferrable skills who can live and work anywhere in the world – But what does this have to do with healthcare?

At a medical conference less than two weeks ago, a physical medicine and rehab physician was telling me he was watching this healthcare debate and depending how it went, looking at potentially moving to New Zealand. He had no idea I had been working with the osteopathic medical profession for the last 10 years on expanding the opportunities for the profession; he was telling me where we had practice rights. But it does not end there, my own family practitioner and her husband, an internist, took a trip this spring to investigate a few countries where they thought might be a good place to live and work. None of these folks are international types, yet they are looking uproot their families and move to another country for a better opportunity. Sure, this is anecdotal evidence now; but in two years, given the current political trajectory, there will be objective studies to show the exodus of the creative class. In less than four years, it will be common knowledge. It is time our politicians wake up before we lose our talent and our tax base.