Now that the Sunday Rutland Herald/Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus has placed Glen A. Wright’s letter of departure from Vermont into the mainstream conversation, those of us who choose not to follow him can have only one thing to say to him: Goodbye, and good luck.

Yes, that was ‘good luck’, not ‘good riddance.’ Just because Wright, who said his family has been in the state for six generations, no longer wants to be a Vermonter is no reason to wish him anything but the best. It’s a free country, and anyone may live wherever he or she chooses for any reason whatsoever.

Wright is leaving, he said, because “the tax burden in Vermont has become more than we are willing to bear. We can’t take it any more and are taking the only possible alternative: leaving Vermont.”

He and his wife, Rosemarie, are selling their house in South Hero and moving to Florida. Folks in South Hero say that the Wrights own a horse farm near Ocala, where they have spent the winter for years. Now it will be their official home.

The move does seem likely to lower their tax bills substantially. Florida has no personal income tax, and the Wrights would seem to have a lot of personal income. How much is uncertain, but according to South Hero Town Clerk Sharon Roy, the Wright’s home and 86.78-acres (“Tara North” in local lore) are assessed at $1.341,700, explaining the $12,000 property tax bill Wright mentioned in his open letter.

A prudent landholder would not own such a expensive piece of property unless he had an income well into six figures, and Wright, according to the newspaper, spent 37 years as a tax accountant. Fiscal prudence comes with the territory. On top of that, his property tax bill in Florida, now that, as a resident, he will be eligible for that state’s “homestead exemption,” will be more than $8,000 less than he was paying in South Hero (pictured above; not Wright’s home, just a scene).

The Wrights had been paying Vermont taxes for years, and those taxes haven’t shot up lately. So what straw broke the moose’s back? In his letter, he indicated that what drove him out of the state was the “recent legislative action reducing the state income-tax deduction, the estate-tax exemption reduction and increasing tax on capital gains (which)  will have a significant negative impact on us.”

Actually, these proposed increases on upper-income earners have not gone into effect, and might not, depending on what happens today with the budget impasse between Gov. Jim Douglas and the Legislature. But perhaps from Wright’s perspective, the very fact that these tax hikes are seriously contemplated was enough to convince him to move away.

Again, that’s his private decision, on which he should not be judged. In writing his open letter, though, he also entered the public policy discussion, and here he is on weaker ground.

Wright is making the case that Vermont’s relatively progressive tax system drives wealthy people out of the state. He doesn’t say why this is a problem for those who remain, but presumably (because this is the case others have made), he believes the exiting rich will take their money with them, leaving the state short of the investment it needs in order to prosper.

“The Legislature has dismissed the fact people leave Vermont for tax purposes because they had no specific evidence of the people leaving.” He wrote. “As a practicing accountant, I testified many times to legislative fiscal committees on tax matters, as did many other tax professionals. These committees refused to believe people were leaving Vermont because we professionals, bound by confidentiality, would not disclose names.”

Well, now he’s disclosing his own and his wife’s names, so we know of two people who are leaving because of high taxes. And proceeding on the assumption that Wright is an honorable fellow, he must know some others.

In other words, he has evidence.

Anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence is not invalid if it is backed up by more objective, empirically testable, evidence.

In this case it is not.

More rich people live in Vermont now than ever before in its history, and their numbers keep going up, high taxes or no. In 2000, according to the official figures of the Department of Taxes, no one in the state made more than $1 million. In 2007 (the latest figures available), 531 Vermonters filed tax returns reporting they earned more than a million clams.

A 531 percent increase.

Well, that’s fooling with statistics. But the number of households reporting between $500,000 and a million also went up more than 25 percent, from 829 to 1,040. And where only 1,285 returns in 2000 were for incomes between $300,000 and $500,000, in 2007 there were 2,163 of them, a 68 percent increase.

OK, these are big percentage hikes on small bases. But check the figures. Vermont’s wealthy have increased in raw numbers, in percentage terms, and as a proportion of the entire population.

In short, for every Glen Wright who leaves Vermont because of the taxes, more than one person roughly as rich as Glen Wright moves into it.

Nor is this some Vermont aberration. Consider New Jersey, with tax rates comparable to Vermont. New Jersey has the largest percentage of millionaires in the country.

We’ll repeat that, to make sure it gets through. In high-tax, heavily-regulated New Jersey, a greater proportion of the people are millionaires than anywhere else in the country.

Almost surely meaning, that, not counting a few oil sheikdoms, it has the biggest proportion of millionaires of any identifiable society in the history of the world.

In other words, plenty of rich people have no problem living in high-tax states if…..

…well, if what?

Good question. Here are three possible answers;

First, as outlined by prize-winning economist Emmanuel Saez, wealthy people are getting a bigger-than-ever (since World War II) share of the total income in the country and paying a smaller percentage of it in taxes, which therefore recede in importance;

Second, some rich people like other things about where they live – the way it looks, the local ball clubs, the rivers and mountains, the theaters and music, the communal feeling, perhaps even the satisfaction that comes from living in a more equitable society. To them, the higher taxes are worth it.

But there’s an economic reason, too. Let’s go back to those Vermont tax numbers (though the same applies in New Jersey, Maryland, and other wealthy, high-tax states). The figures also show big increases among the affluent but not quite rich. Those earning between $125,000 and $150,000 rose by 75 percent. And there were 82 percent more returns reporting between $150,000 and $200,000.

For the most part, folks in this bracket don’t have enough spare cash to do a lot of investing. But they do a whole lot of consuming. They buy cars, appliances, clothing, furniture, skis, houses, land, accounting services (like Wright’s), theater tickets, divorces, lobster dinners, and more.

And you know what all that consumption attracts?

Investment. Big money from its residents and from others; you don’t have to live here to invest here.

But many people do both. The evidence is that Vermont is a good place to make money. That’s probably why rich people keeping moving in, and why non-rich Vermonters get rich. That’s why Vermont has experienced “a higher than average growth at the top of the income distribution,” in the words of a study by University of New Hampshire economists.

Generally speaking, he who makes more will end up with more, even if he pays more of it in taxes. That may not apply to Glen Wright, who seems to be retired, meaning his income would be essentially the same no matter where he lived. But it will apply to the 40-year old entrepreneur who (effectively) replaces him in Vermont.

But wouldn’t there be even more investment and faster growth if taxes were lower and all the Glen Wrights stayed, making their contributions to the state’s economy?

Maybe, but probably not. Because over the lat several years, Vermont, like most of the other high-tax states, has grown as much as its neighbors, including those with lower taxes.  Last month, Vermont was one of six states that actually added jobs. At any rate, growth depends on several factors, investment being but one of them, and usually not the main one.

There is more to be said on this subject. But today’s exercise has gone on long enough. Tomorrow’s post will deal with the drama in Montpelier, but hold these thoughts. We’ll return to Mr.\Wright and his letter later in the week.