Writing in the New York Post , E.J. McMahon gives our president a rudimentary - but necessary - lesson in economics:It also requires overlooking the impact of higher state income taxes in New York City, where the current combined state and local income tax rate of 12.62 percent is already the highest in the nation. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Albany is now reaping the predictable consequences of Paterson's cave-in to the Legislature's demand for higher income taxes. Since the mid '90s, New York has become increasingly reliant on taxes generated by a small number of high-income households. By 2007, the top 1 percent of earners was generating 41 percent of the state's income-tax receipts. This tax structure was "inherently unstable," "volatile" and "unsustainable," as the state Assembly Majority Ways and Means Committee staff acknowledged in a report last February. Yet, with a big push from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, this year's...(Read Full Post)