I have multiple columns comparing Florida and New York, as well as a set of columns comparing Texas and California.

Today, let’s do our first column comparing low-tax New Hampshire (no income tax and frequently is in first place in rankings of state economic liberty) and high-tax Vermont (8.75 percent top income tax rate).

I decided to write on this topic after a reader sent me this report ranking state tax burdens. Here’s what it included for New Hampshire, which got credit for having the next-to-lowest tax burden in the country.

And here’s how the report ranked Vermont, which has the third-highest tax burden in the country.

The bottom line is that these two states, which are very similar in most respects, have very different fiscal systems.

So now let’s ask a simple question: What’s the impact of having an overall tax burden that is more than twice as high in Vermont compared to neighboring New Hampshire?

So I went to the Bureau of Economic Analysis website and I found data over the past 28 years. Lo and behold, New Hampshire is consistently growing faster.

I then went to ChatGPT and asked for a 50-year comparison.

We see the same results. And the ChatGPT analysis highlights something very important, which is the effect of compounding.

The net result is that people in New Hampshire are richer and they’re enjoying faster growth.

In other words, a new entry for my Anti-Convergence Club.

P.S. I find ChatGPT useful. It’s like a more thorough version of a search engine. However, ChatGPT did not mention fiscal differences when analyzing the different growth rates and different levels of prosperity in New Hampshire and Vermont. Is that a sign of built-in bias? Or just inadequate computation? I don’t know. Maybe ChatGPT is like the establishment media, where bias is most seen in what information gets highlighted?