THAT WOULD BE TERRIBLE. The South Will Rise Again Under GOP Tax Plan: Florida and Texas will become the new centers of finance and innovation.

Many analysts say the U.S. is a low-tax country, mostly on the idea that taxes paid as a percentage of gross domestic product are lower than most other developed economies. But whether the U.S. is a low- or high-tax country is a matter of perspective, and depends a lot on your income, as the tax code is steeply progressive. With a top federal rate of 39.6 percent, plus a state income tax of 9 percent to 13 percent, plus property taxes — which are no longer fully deductible — the tax burden for high earners approaches Scandinavia, where tax rates are in the high 50 percent range.

People used to complain about high taxes before, but for the most part, they tolerated them. I suspect that now they are going to do something about it because capping the deductibility of state and local taxes (SALT, as it is known) has the potential to result in a population migration so large that it would result in profound economic and social changes. For starters, the South could become home to some of the nation’s largest cities. Many businesses will flee high-tax states in favor of low-tax states. This has been happening for years, but SALT will accelerate the trend.

The only downside is that that migration might turn some red states blue. Some GOP donors need to set up a Welcome Wagon service for those fleeing blue states, to educate them on why they shouldn’t just agitate for the policies that ruined the states they left. With today’s data-mining, such people wouldn’t be hard to identify and reach.