Weird that California is the lead, but second paragraph reads "The population decrease was second only to New York, which lost about 15,000 more people than California"
If you read the original source (not trying to be snarky, just literally saw the same article there a day or two ago) it’s from the LA times which makes sense why it would focus on California
I don't think the goal is to pack the majority of the US population into 2-3 states and a dozen cities.
Over the past decade we've already seen other states see economic growth and inflows that resulted in high housing prices - Washington State, Oregon, hell, even Colorado is crazy expensive compared to 20 years ago.
I think it would be great if people moved to lower cost of living states and improve the economic growth there.
Wyoming has a big blue chunk in Jackson Hole Teton County that is mostly multi-multi-billionaires. They are still a rather small population and most are old school democrats. Most of the state are republicans [1] I was a Californian and I am unaffiliated. I meet a lot of former Californians here and like me, most moved here for liberty and not for political reasons. They will not be told what to do and that is most of the population. Here [2] is a transplant to Wyoming that speaks about the state.
Laramie county also has a big chunk of Democrats as it is a college town. ~6000 of that 7815 are the students and I assume most of the rest are staff members
The SF bay area alone added over 500k more jobs than housing over the last decade. And it’s not like the area was known for having ample housing before that.
> Net migration out of California surpassed that of the next highest state, New York, by about 143,000 people. Nearby states such as Utah have warned Californians who might consider moving to stay out. A similar story is playing out in Nevada, where California migrants are seeking to re-create their lifestyle.
Oregon is getting hit pretty bad with Californian immigrants. Prices in places like Bend are nuts now. Too bad there’s no way for states to control immigration from other states.
> Too bad there’s no way for states to control immigration from other states.
Yeah, not really. But you can always hitchhike over to the state they left and shit on the sidewalk, and then rob a Walgreens with no repercussions whatsoever.
And this is why is California is trying to get a 10 year exit tax on your income. They know they’ve fucked their golden goose so they need to extract as much as they can before the system collapses on itself from lack of top earners to pay the majority of the income tax.
It's basically a wealth tax of 0.4% on assets above $30M, worldwide.
If you leave the state - pay all the taxes due, you are still responsible to pay that wealth tax for 10 years.
No distinction is made for assets acquired prior to moving to California. You could acquire wealth prior to moving to California, then as soon as you're a resident you have to pay it, and for 10 years after you leave.
What's going to happen is that people with that kind of wealth just won't move to California and people who might have that kind of wealth will make sure they leave before they trigger it.
It's a terrible law. Reminds me of places like New Jersey which did an amazing job chasing all their high-net worth people out of the state.
But it won't be $30M for long. It's be $20M, then $10M, then $5M including your house.
And wealth taxes have failed miserably everywhere they've been tried. France instituted one a few years back and it failed to capture even a small percentage of expected revenue - people just do whatever they can to avoid it, including leaving the country.
This is a lame slippery slope argument. $30MM dollars as net worth is well above the vast, vast majority of Californians, even those in STEM, acting, or other fields.
Most of the fearmongering is also pretty lame, for the same reasons -- "soon it will be the 5-millionaires!" -- which is, again, far removed from the average Californian, even the average STEM worker in Cali outside of mid-to-high level FAANG types.
Also the same verbiage used repeatedly. Every time. For decades. And I've been here for decades, so I have literally observed this from detractors since the 80s.
Same dung, different cycle. If you think taxes are worse now than they were in the 70s and 80s, I'd say the deja vu is ardent.
There was a time in this country (back in the 50s and 60s) where the highest tax rate on income was near 90%, and corporate tax rates were several times higher than now.
We've fooled ourselves into thinking that CA is "the worst for taxes" when we aren't. We certainly don't carry the lowest tax burden, but this isn't a race for the top or bottom, but what you get for it.
I'd argue one of the daftest things about US discourse on taxes is the absolutism of whether "taxation is theft" (it isn't, it's part of the cost of doing business as a country) but what is the return on the service quality of those taxes, are their uses auditable, is the transparency around them good...it usually isn't, but then we also do nothing to improve that, which makes most of our perpetually binary and dumb tax talk that much more annoying.
Here's a practical example: I hire people from California. I had to fill out multiple forms and now pay extra tax just for those guys. I don't have to do this anywhere else.
California is famous for squandering wealth on huge projects, aren't they? Wasn't like 60k per homeless person spent? We live on different planets.
It's awful to do business in/with California, sorry. And yes their taxes are awful. The worst in the USA dude, I'm so confused..? Who is worse?
The middle class is leaving. Rich people in retirement can enjoy the better parts of Cali for all its worth. The poorest (homeless) can't really leave.
Most of the homeless come from out of state. The reason they can stay is that they didn't arrive with the ambition to rise at all because that's not a requirement for receiving free benefits or good weather.
It is a mazlows hierarchy style argument. You shouldn't be taxed on the income you need to eat. You should be taxed gently on the income you need for basic comfort. You should be taxed more heavily on the income used for luxuries etc etc
If the point is that those earning more should pay more taxes, that is already achieved by using a relative measure like percentages.
To be honest, I am not exactly sure what the original goals behind progressive taxes are? Is the goal to discourage employers from giving out exorbitantly large salaries? Is it to equalize salaries? Or simply to collect more taxes from those who can afford it? Or something else?
I agree having better criteria around the goals we want to achieve like you suggest should drive our taxation systems. But if we say no taxes for food, is it organic food? What if someone is allergic to common food (gluten, lactose...) and price is significantly higher?
How about basic comforts? By virtue of being significantly taller than average, I have to pay the premium for larger cars simply to be able to fit inside (I still drive a sedan and not a SUV: they don't get more space inside). And need custom beds, taller kitchen counters... All of this is more expensive than mass-produced furniture or smaller cars. And even for "luxury" items like flying long haul, you can't tell me it's fair that for the same price, some people get 4" in front of their knees to the backrest in front, and I get my knees stuck into that same backrest. I understand that from the sellers' perspective, but to get the same comfort, I need to pay more for premium economy.
Basically, progressive tax is an attempt at some form of equalization, but I wonder which one is it, so I can have a better opinion of how we can achieve fairness.
But saying how those who earn more should pay more, when they already do, is simply silly.
The fact that I do realise what they mean does not mean that I can't oppose their incorrect wording. This incorrect wording is specifically used to influence people to think that higher earners are currently paying equal or less taxes, when they are literally paying more already!
I've also literally gave counter-examples why "the goals ... as [you] described" are not sufficient to justify progressive taxation being introduced: different people have different needs (and thus costs) for any of the categories of expenditure you bring up, yet this is unsolved by progressive taxation.
IOW, I am looking for a better reasoned argument than just "rich people should pay even more" (when higher income does not necessarily mean richer people: we all know how really rich people can play with accounting and get by on $1 salaries).
There are taxation schemes which do take a bunch of these criteria in: eg. property taxes for a lived-in home vs rented-out home, tax benefits based on the number of dependents etc.
But progressive taxation is not contextual in that sense, so I want goals to be publicly stated so we can reason about whether they are a good solution or not.
