Millionaires Flee California After Tax Hike
forbes.com
forbes.com
> California lost a very small but statistically significant percentage of high-income residents after voters approved Proposition 30
I wish it was possible to talk about important and interesting issues like optimal tax levels without everything being an ideological battle. I don't care if you think taxes are too high on high income earners. You might be right. But you should be curious about the possibility that you're wrong.
Irony meter off the charts.
most people don't understand they are likely tax consumers, not providers. As a thought experiment, it must be true that at some income level a person uses more taxes than they provide. Quantifying the exact number is difficult and locality dependent, but it clearly exists. Who do you think the major tax revenue providers are? Corporations and rich people. I don't understand why anyone thinks they're not paying their fair share when they are almost the only ones paying.
The top 10% of us wage earners account for over 70% of personal income tax revenue, while the bottom 50% (under 40k/year) contribute <3%
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxe...
Says who? If it is, who says that's wrong? Life is inherently unequal in every way. Disproportionality is not a moral argument.
> they are the only ones left with anything of value and any real disposable income
by almost every measure, now is the greatest time to be alive in all of recorded history. Additionally, as long as youre not homeless in America you are in the top 1% wealthiest people in the world.
> I mean come on if the top 10 percent are only paying 70% then they are underpaying based on the fact that they hold 77% of American wealth.
How does that make any sense? You personally have more money than millions of people with a better quality of life that they are _literally dying_ to achieve. Did you drink clean water today? could you go to an emergency room for life saving care, even if the bill would be difficult to pay? How much do you donate, since you have such a disproportionate amount of wealth - are you paying your fair share in the world?
You keep talking globally without the valid counterpoint. You're mixing American taxation with global outcomes and saying because we have it better off it's not wrong. That's the functional equivalent of telling a person on a sinking ship that they should feel lucky they aren't drowning while you pass by on your yacht. You can always find someone worse off, but wouldn't it be more productive to build the pie by bringing up the bottom rather than pulling up the ladder behind you.
You again don't seem to understand facts. It's simple numbers. If money keeps pooling at the top democracy doesn't function, it functionally can't because of the power imbalance and we've seen it more than once in the United States.
Since you're asking personally questions I donate large amounts of my personal money because I know my station and came up from poverty, but my lack of hypocrisy isn't the point. The point isn't how much you give it's how much you have left after you've given. The United States is one of the most charitable countries in the world, however that means absolutely nothing because as stated prior, the people at the bottom no longer have the funds to go to the hospital. You seem to be woefully unaware of the reality in the United States, many Americans literally cannot or will not go to the hospital or an emergency room due to cost and a not insignificant percentage of those people either die or end up worse off because of it. Right now in the United States we have literally entire towns and cities that do not have access to clean, safe water, much less electricity and running sewage. Add to that infant mortality rates in the United States are worse than most other developed countries, economic mobility is currently anemic in either direction and has been since Ronald Reagan and nearly half Americans are one or two months away from a foreclosure and homelessness. Just what wonderland do you think most Americans are living in?
edit: For terrible, no good, horrible grammar.
If all you are doing is starting the fact that some people have more money than others, that is a correct and useless statement. You very clearly mean to imply that this inequality is morally wrong and should be changed, and I challenge that moral claim as incorrect (and dangerous and self destructive).
> That's the functional equivalent of telling a person on a sinking ship that they should feel lucky they aren't drowning while you pass by on your yacht.
I have no idea what you're getting at.
> If money keeps pooling at the top democracy doesn't function
This doesn't have anything to do with taxes, but American campaign finance laws certainly have room for improvement. The constitutional republic is certainly unhinging from the needs of the masses, but I would argue this is a federal government problem, not a money-buys-influence problem.
> You seem to be woefully unaware of the reality in the United States
I am aware bad things are happening. This is not a reason to totally dismantle the capitalist system that catapulted hundreds of millions of people into an unprecedented standard of living and quality of life the world has never seen.
> Add to that infant mortality rates in the United States are worse than most other developed countries
This is basically meaningless. The US has ~6 per thousand, and other countries like canada, Germany, and France have 3-5. You sound like you're regurgitating memes you saw on Facebook.
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&ser... https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
More to my point - those infant mortality rates you're complaining about? Those have dropped at an unprecedented rate continuously for 80 years across the world.
> half Americans are one or two months away from a foreclosure and homelessness.
What? Everyone that owns a home under mortgage is 3 months from homelessness. It's a bill you have to pay or they take it from you.
> Just what wonderland do you think most Americans are living in?
America.
You glossed over that like there is some ideal system we're being kept from by evil rich people. What exactly is this unlocked door we open and everything is solved?
Whether we can agree that a given tax policy is good or bad is dependent on whether we can agree to what the goal of taxation is. I think the goal is to maximize human flourishing. I honestly don't know what the optimal levels are, but I don't think it's 0 and I think it will involve a progressive tax structure of some sort. It's true that if millionaires were "fleeing" California than we could agree that California's tax policy was running counter to that goal. But that's not what is happening. It's a clickbaity headline that only serves to score a point in an ideological battle.
>The state lost an estimated 138 high-income individuals, or about 0.04 percent of the roughly 312,000 people subject to the tax increase, said co-author Charles Varner, associate director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Dozens...
Ideally, the mods would replace the top link with the SFChronicle one that puts the number in context and gives way more details, but it may not be worth it.
You don’t obsess and negotiate over 0.1% increases in option pools and ignore the silent 15%/25%/35% partner in the room.
CA eliminating the QSBS Section 1202 exemption is an equally glaring wart on establishing CA residency for entrepreneurs.
???
No horse in the California tax race personally, but if taxes are your foremost consideration when launching your startup, you should really rethink your plans. That advice is not specific to California startups. If taxes are the foremost consideration for a prospective startup anywhere in the US, you should sit down with someone to talk through your plan. Just to ensure that it makes sense.
If I heard that from a prospective startup here in Wisconsin? I have to say, just on first blush, something would sound off about that.
Sure, that's why nobody's built a company in CA in the last decade, and they all chose to build them in Seattle.
I would say this is fake logic. No-one is going to stop trying to be a millionaire because of taxes.
Though they may try to move to a another state to avoid them.
That just highlights that the tax system needs to be less fragmented and "service oriented". Individual states may charge taxes based on the services they provide, but taxation at large should be about balancing the wealth distribution.
Entertainment seems to given an oversized voice in influencing politics. It would be right for the industry to contribute a corresponding amount of money to help fund the issues espoused.
Washington has been great! At least a 13% raise!