Wealth & Money Quote by Ernie Fletcher

Fletcher’s line is a masterclass in political compression: take a complicated economic story and shrink it into a single lever voters can picture, like a thermostat. “Attract more people” frames Kentucky as a competitor in a national talent marketplace, where residents are mobile, investment is footloose, and the state’s primary job is to price itself attractively. It’s an aspirational pitch disguised as arithmetic.

The key move is the absolutism: “the single most important thing.” That phrasing isn’t meant to persuade economists; it’s meant to discipline the agenda. Once you crown one policy as the top priority, every other claim on public money becomes secondary, even suspect. Schools, infrastructure, addiction treatment, childcare, rural broadband - all can be quietly reclassified as nice-to-haves rather than the scaffolding of “opportunity.”

Subtext: opportunity is recast as something government enables best by getting out of the way. Taxes aren’t depicted as the price of a functioning state, but as a deterrent, a kind of anti-magnet. The argument also flatters the listener: you’re not asking for help, you’re demanding fairness; prosperity will follow once the state stops taking.

Context matters because tax-cut promises thrive in moments of economic anxiety and regional insecurity, especially in states worried about brain drain and stagnation. It’s a bid to sound pro-growth without naming winners and losers. The tension it politely omits is the tradeoff: lower income-tax revenue either shifts the burden elsewhere or shrinks public capacity - and that, too, shapes whether people choose to stay, come, or leave.