As I head to New Hampshire for the Nullify Now event on Saturday, I am reminded of my younger years, growing up a lad in Massachusetts. The slogan was “Make It in Massachusetts.” To which New Hampshire replied, “…and spend it in New Hampshire.” We lived about half an hour from Salem, New Hampshire, so of course that’s where we made all our significant purchases. (There’s no sales tax in New Hampshire.)
One Massachusetts state senator, Nick Costello, once sought to aid the towns near the New Hampshire border whose economies suffered from the flight of consumers out of Massachusetts. He wanted to eliminate the sales tax for them. Then it dawned on him that this would simply create a new ribbon of towns that would suffer, as consumers fled from them into the tax-free Massachusetts towns. The only way to solve the problem once and for all would be to abolish the sales tax throughout the state. That was not on the table, needless to say. Some problems you just have to learn to live with, you see.
10:55 am on March 17, 2011
