North Dakota Drills Its Way Out Of Property Taxes

One state has found a solution to job and economic growth so successful it may eliminate one of the most onerous of taxes. It turns out that, yes, we can drill our way out of our problems. On Tuesday in North Dakota, a state flush with revenues from oil produced from the Bakken Shale formation it sits astride, voters were deciding whether theirs will become the first and only state not to have a property tax. If it passes (polls didn't close until after our press time), it ll be the first time a state has eliminated a major tax since 1980. That was when oil-rich Alaska dropped its state income tax as crude gushed from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope. If you can see a pattern here, you're way ahead of President Obama. His argument is that we can't drill our way out of high energy prices let alone out of debt and the need for higher taxes. But it's about to be exposed once again as the self-serving falsehood it is. Shattering the myth of "peak oil," as Professor Mark J. Perry reports at his Carpe Diem blog, North Dakota pumped another record amount of oil during the month of March at a rate of 575,490 barrels per day. In so doing, it replaced California as the nation's No. 3 oil-producing state, behind Texas and Alaska. At its current rate of production growth, North Dakota will likely top Alaska sometime this year...more