Hillsdale College professor Burt Folsom provides this brief analysis of how high taxes killed Detroit and how low taxes have led to prosperity in San Fransisco, Boston and New York. While Raleigh and Charlotte are not Detroit yet, city fathers and mothers seem to constantly give in to the constant pressure for more spending and more debt.

The city of Detroit is a case study in how high taxes can help to trigger a city’s decline. Detroit has had many problems, but at the top of the list: taxes the city has imposed on income, property, and utilities. Those taxes are three times higher than the average for the rest of Michigan, according to Stephen Henderson of the Detroit Free Press. Shopkeepers and homeowners have thus chosen to flee the high cost of doing business in Detroit. From 1950 to 1980, Detroit lost 34% of its people; from 1980 to 2010 Detroit lost 40% more. Each wave of fleeing citizens means fewer people are left to support schools, businesses, and urban services. Economist Gary Wolfram, my Hillsdale College colleague, estimates that 40% of Detroit adults are functional illiterates–people abandoned by the public school unions but too poor to leave town.