An important and valuable lesson for states:

This article goes hand in hand with the story of the goose that laid the golden egg.

Raising taxes to close budget deficits usually fails, unless taxes are massively low to start with and that isn't the case for NY and NJ. I am not one of the top 5%, so the tax increases wouldn't directly affect me, but they would squeeze someone who would employ me, and if a wealthy entrepreneur leaves NY, how many jobs leave the state as well? Now if only we could find some way to send our bottom 5% to a more generous nation that can fill their gravy train.