Citizens and businesses are fleeing states with fiscal problems – that is one apparent message from the latest annual report from United Van Lines. The company’s study of 2012 interstate shipments, released in December, showed significant continuing flight from states with high state government debt loads as measured by the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA).
For example, the top five states for the share of outbound interstate shipments in the latest UVL survey were, in order from one to five – New Jersey, Illinois, West Virginia, New York, and New Mexico. The average taxpayer burden estimated by IFTA (a careful estimate of state government debt loads) for these five states came to $25,000 in the latest year, more than three times the average of $7,850 for the other 45 states.