There’s apparently General Assembly backsliding in efforts to make Rhode Island’s tax structure more competitive with Massachusetts and Connecticut. Indeed, some legislators seem to want to actually raise income taxes to pay for programs (such as the state’s out-of-control public-employee pension plans, whose reform some legislators fervently fight) and make it even less competitive.

Common sense would dictate that leaders of this tiny state realize it shouldn’t be less tax-competitive than its much bigger neighbors. But many legislators have little experience in the private sector, know little about how investment capital creates companies and jobs, have never had to meet a payroll and, indeed, know little about what is happening policy-wise outside the tight confines of this minuscule jurisdiction.

What does play all too big a part in their decision-making is pressure from representatives of local interest groups they meet in the street or in the State House.

Signs of the Ocean State’s tax system can be seen in such data as that the Ocean State last year ranked 47th in America in job growth and that the percentage of Rhode Islanders reporting income of more than $200,000 is only 2.7 percent, much lower than its neighbors’. In 2005-06, even before the recession, more than 8,200 taxpayers fled Rhode Island, and that flight seems to be accelerating.

But then with Rhode Island’s individual income-tax rate America’s highest, at 9.9 percent, the estate-tax exemption ($650,000) the lowest, and the corporate-income-tax rate of 9 percent the seventh highest, you might guess that there would be such bad numbers.

Legislators must accept the common sense that money is fungible, and hold the line on taxes. Rhode Island simply cannot prosper for long if its tax structure is more daunting than its neighbors’. It is just too small to go its own way.