Vote with your feet, or someone else’s

Relocating to a new legal jurisdictions to alter the government policies that affect you is extremely common behavior. People flee high tax areas. Parents move to better school districts. Thousands of Americans picked up and moved westward in the 19th century in search of opportunity in the territories. Sometimes the movement is defensive. Refugees come here fleeing oppressive foreign regimes. Mormons set off and created Desert and later Utah to shield themselves from persecution in the east. Celebrities and academics threaten to move to Canada occasionally, and sometimes actually do. The numerous state and local governments in the U.S. federal system make such voting with your feet options pretty common. Fifty different tax regimes, fifty different business climates, fifty different levels of public spending. The relative ease of movement to a new state also constrains state and local policy; if you tax too much, people will go. States often compete for emigrants. Florida is very…