Op-ed proving millionaires flee taxes cites Sweden's 1970s exodus, skips New York's tax hike gaining millionaires this year.

…(cont) Today's piece, October 10th, is the one on top now, and it's making an argument: tax the rich too hard and they leave. For its example it goes back to Sweden in the 1970s, when the country, in the piece's own words, was running an experiment in "democratic socialism" that frustrated entrepreneurs enough that some of them went elsewhere. Fifty-some years ago. Is there a second example in there, something from this decade, a country or a city that tried it recently and watched the money walk? I read it through twice. Maybe you'll find one where I didn't.

Under that one is a piece from September 10th. New York raised its tax rate on the wealthiest people living there. Before the vote, the warnings ran everywhere — Fox News carried them, and so did a hedge fund manager named Bill Ackman, who was quoted saying it only takes a handful of successful people leaving to "decimate the city's tax base." A grocery chain executive, John Catsimatidis, is named in the same sentence. The clipping says wealthy residents were "panicking." Whose word is that, exactly — Ackman's, inside the quotation marks? Catsimatidis's, in whatever he said next? The sentence lists all three together and then stops right where somebody's actual words would start. I can't tell you whose panic that is. What the headline above all of it says, in plain print, is that more millionaires moved into New York after the tax than left.

I think about the old toll plaza on the turnpike, before they put in the readers, with the basket you threw your quarters into. Somebody still had to reconcile that basket against how many cars actually came through — not a guess shouted from a booth, but a count, axle by axle, written on a slip at the end of the shift. A warning is a man on a cable program saying a handful of people leaving could decimate a tax base. A count is a line in a clipping stating how many people actually came and how many actually left. Which one of those two made it into the piece sitting on my desk today?

My car still needs a new fan belt. I've been saying I'll get to the garage three Saturdays running now. As long as I don't pull the hood and look at it, I don't have to know exactly how far gone it is.

One more thing, and I should've asked it first instead of last. The piece from today, the one built on Sweden in the 1970s — does it mention New York anywhere in it? The tax, the date, the number of millionaires who moved in instead of out? I went through it twice looking for the words. You might have better luck than I did.