Here’s what you need to earn to live comfortable in NJ (Opinion)

According to the website Gobankingrates.com, you would need to earn $86,244. a year to live comfortably in New Jersey. It's not so shocking to most of us who had had heads kicked in by the state for years, but to young people just coming out of school, that could be a scary figure. Everything is more expensive here because of taxes and regulation. You people keep voting in criminals and socialists who think growing government is the state crop and not tomatoes or blueberries and this is what you get. It's great if you work in government, and more and more of us do, but who pays the bills? The private sector. And that's why businesses and major corporations have fled like Canada Geese in the fall, and have gone south. So have many New Jerseyans, especially those with comfortable pensions, mostly state workers.

This is also the reason, that if you send your kid to college out of state, they most likely won't come back. The jobs are in low tax, low regulation, less unionized states south of here. Not too far to the south, you'll find plenty of New Jersey ex-pats in Delaware, where the income to live comfortably is about $15,000 less a year.

Most of us love where we live. We love the neighborhoods, our families who brought us up, our friends, the beach and the proximity to cities like New York and Philly. But it's getting harder and harder to pay the bills. With a governor like Murphy who keeps raising taxes and tells us "if you want lower taxes, maybe New Jersey is not the state for you'", then you have a decision to make. Keep smiling while you're getting kicked in the teeth or move out. Because your neighbors are going to keep voting in the same morons that got us into this situation. It's your call.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Dennis Malloy. Any opinions expressed are Dennis' own.

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