I'm stunned that the reporter said:

"lost tax revenues – estimated at $35m a year by the think tank – would be filled through budget cuts."

Budget cuts don't "fill" anything... "fill" implies that $35m would be replaced. Budget cuts might address the $35m loss, with a matching hole. But they don't "fill" a damn thing.

Deceptive language... from the Guardian of all places.

This is intriguing. If they make all the below-average counties worse, thus lowering the average, would they slowly regress until they only had one above-average county?

I'm almost curious to see this tried just because of the epic fail it represents.

This is fantastic.

However, I would just apply this to individuals, not "zones".

Anyone who does not have a certain amount of assets -- property, stocks -- would pay zero tax. Nothing. Until they gain wealth.

@2,

You gotta love how they're going to close the gap with budget cuts. So the welfare-heavy, poorer counties are going to backslide while the captains of industry introduce more minimum wage jobs, because that's worked out so well in the rest of the country.

sneaky aren't they.

#4

Minimum wage jobs work when there are minimum cost lifestyles.

That's the part you Libs don't get.

If I don't have the money to pay for things, prices fall.

That is, unless some government is propping up prices with subsidies and at the same time expecting its recompense in taxes.

Maine makes me think of lobsters and Stephen King.

@6: By paragraph:
wtf, no u, wtf, wtf.

Bringing the Third World to your door one county at a time.

3, promise us that you'll move there & report back how you're living in shangri-la.

Tax free? Infrastructure free? skill free? and road free zones to spur economic growth? What exactly is going to happen in those zones that are going to be raising any capital in any meaningful globally competitive way? Sharking skilled labor from parts of the country that have paid their dues perhaps ... but other than digging ditches or setting up posh ass wiping resorts for uber rich people, I don't really know who benefits from this type of "economic stimulation."

And @6, there are these strange studies that suggest that these "cheap standard of living zones" and wages are heavily subsidized by the government in terms of medicaid and earned income tax credits that raise these people above poverty at the benefit of those that actually do contribute to the tax base of the nation.