How States Compete (And Why Maine Is Losing) | Episode 18 with Grover Norquist

So as you go through and you look at how things worked out on politics, I decided to focus on taxes.

I got a job right out of college running the National Tax Commission because a friend had told me that there was an opening to be the number two person.

So I came down.

just before Proposition 13 hit in June 1978.

And I was just out of college, and I was the number two guy, and the number one guy decided he was bored with the job and had a more interesting thing to do.

So I got to run the National Tax Version at the time that the tax revolt exploded, and we were the only national taxpayer group around.

So it was being thrown into the

Right in the deep end.

In the deep end to see if you can swim.

Yeah.

I traveled to 18 states where we passed measures, both things that were spending limits and also constitutional convention calls for a constitutional convention to set up a balanced budget amendment.

We got up to 30 states, 18 states when I was there, 12 before.

And then I got more sense.

But so that was where I started working with each of the state groups.

And I realized federalism was our secret sauce for those of us who believe in freedom.

Since our ideas work, you can do them.

School choice, lower taxes, less spending, better tort law, better labor law, letting people be free to decide whether they want to join a union or not.

You look at the states.

You can get states that do some of those, all of those, and then compare states that go the other direction.

It's one thing to say, oh, go back in history and look at what happened.

Well, it might have been something else in history that might have that effect.

Or compare one country with another.

Well, they're very different.

They speak different languages, and the weather is different.

50 states, everybody's familiar with.