California’s worst addiction: Tax increases that don’t fix what’s broken - "the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and the California Teachers Association, which just filed, respectively, a wealth tax initiative that targets any Californian with assets of more than $1 billion and a ballot measure that would make a temporary income-tax increase permanent. The governor must now decide whether he should retreat from or continue to support the tax-and-spend policies that have saddled California with the highest state income-tax rate and the nation’s highest rates of poverty , unemployment , and homelessness , as well as the highest energy costs in the continental U.S., without producing better public services. The totality of these policies has proved poisonous to California citizens. Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011, California’s budget has grown two and a half times to almost $300 billion. But no rider of BART, parent of a California student, or renter or prospective homebuyer in the state would say their life is two and a half times better. The sorry truth is that the extra tax revenue has flowed largely to government employees in the form of lavish compensation packages. Take the empty promises made before voters approved Prop. 30’s “temporary” tax increase in 2012: better schools and balanced budgets. Instead, they got a master class in how public unions steer tax revenue into their own wallets while providing minimal service improvements... California spends $24,000 per K-12 student — well above the national average — but math and reading scores have declined . Increasingly, California parents look with envy at public schools in Mississippi and other red states . The root of California’s tax-and-spend political economy was Gov. Gray Davis’ 1999 decision to grant a norm-shattering retroactive pension increase to state employees. Since then, annual state pension spending has risen more than tenfold — not due to state employees delivering exponentially better services but because benefit formulas were enhanced even as investment returns failed to keep pace with projected results. Not even the most staunchly conservative California governor could undo these changes. Pension obligations are constitutionally protected in California, creating a one-way ratchet where benefits can only increase... Since taking office in 2019, Newsom has boosted staffing in the executive branch by 20% and added $11 billion to annual spending on compensation and benefits. When faced with recent deficits, he tapped budget reserves rather than freeze hiring or compensation. This isn’t incompetence — it’s political self-preservation. Meanwhile, Texas and Florida have absorbed massive population growth while keeping per-capita spending increases below the rate of inflation. The difference isn’t the cost of living; it’s the cost of elected officials in California giving in to public employee unions. Breaking that cycle requires citizen action. Real change will come only when voters reward politicians who serve them instead of special interests... If the last $104 billion in “temporary” taxes produced so little improvement while sending pension costs soaring, why would the next $100 billion be any different?"
Damn billionaires!
Time to mock red states again
Meme - Lauren Chen: "FUN FACT: Zuckerberg's wife, Priscilla Chan, donated $750,000 to oppose the recall efforts against Newsom in 2021 Obviously they have the money to flee the consequences of their bad decisions, unlike most Californians"
Remarks @remarks: "JUST IN: Mark Zuckerberg officially leaves California, relocates to Florida to avoid new "wealth tax.""
Chief Nerd on X - "🚨 Kara Swisher on California’s Wealth Tax “You made all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of sh*t. You could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you.”"
Stacey on X - "Hi @karaswisher No one “deserves” anyone else’s labor. Period. End of story. We all pay taxes as part of a social compact which has been blown up by Somali fraud, DOGE exposing wasteful spending, the train to nowhere in CA, Newsome’s refusal to audit homeless spendng, recent earmark revelations, and the looming bankruptcy of Social Security. The government at all levels has proven itself a horrible steward of public money. None of us should pay a dime. State or local. Screw you."
Left wingers are never grateful to the rich people who pay so much taxes. Curious.
Meme - skepticalifornia @skepticaliblog: "When this quote of CA wealth tax proponents confusing asset confiscation with income first circulated, everyone here rightfully mocked leftist innumeracy. Turns out it was taken verbatim from the author of the measure itself UC Berkeley's Robert Reich. Behold: Elite Human Capital"
"The incomes of America's billionaires have been rising by an average of 7.5 percent a year since the start of the pandemic - in sharp contrast with the measly 1.5 percent average increase for median-income Americans. So even after the 5 percent ta levied, the ultra wealthy will still be getting wealthier at a rapid clip."
Maciej Stachowiak @othermaciej: "I'd have thought former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich would know the difference between a stock and a flow, but apparently not?"
This is very basic economics, but of course left wingers are utterly economically illiterate
Chief Nerd on X - "🚨 Scott Jennings on the Real Reason California is Proposing a Billionaires Tax “In California, the state auditor just found $70 billion in fraud going on in the state. The reason they need a wealth tax is to cover up the fraud.”"
TBPN on X - "a16z's @bhorowitz says the California wealth tax is the "best strategy" to dismantle Silicon Valley that he's ever seen. "It's been so hard to break the Silicon Valley network effect, but this is the best strategy I've seen." "Norway has an unrealized capital gains tax. Norway's got a lot of extremely smart people, great entrepreneurs, but they all left." "When you talk to entrepreneurs in Norway, they're like, 'I literally can't pay the tax because the company got marked up, and I own a lot of it, and I can't get that money out.'" "'It's a private company. I'm stuck. So, I have to leave the country.'" "There are basically no tech entrepreneurs in Norway now.""
David Sacks on X - "If progressives manage to break Silicon Valley’s network effect, it would be of great benefit to the rest of the country. The riches of the tech industry would spread to other states, especially red ones. It’s time to “share the wealth”!"
Why California’s One-Time Wealth Tax Won’t Work - "Supporters argue that the tax would raise tens of billions of dollars to offset projected shortfalls in healthcare funding, while affecting only a small number of ultra-wealthy individuals. The state’s own fiscal analysts are more circumspect. The Legislative Analyst’s Office notes that the revenue is temporary, difficult to forecast, and likely to be offset in part by an ongoing reduction in income-tax receipts if high earners respond by changing their behavior or relocating. This caveat is not incidental but presents the central economic problem with wealth taxation, and it is precisely where California’s proposal begins to unravel... A wealth tax that applies based on residency at a single point in time incentivizes preemptive planning, legal restructuring and the creation of outside options. Whether those options are exercised by 5% or 20% of the affected population is fiscally decisive in a state whose revenue system is already highly concentrated. California’s reliance on high earners is unusually extreme. A small fraction of taxpayers accounts for a disproportionate share of personal income tax receipts, with the top 1% typically contributing 40-50% of all state income tax receipts. And this doesn’t account for their indirect contributions through business ownership, capital formation, venture finance and firm leadership. Losing even a handful of these high-earning taxpayers meaningfully alters revenue volatility, particularly given California’s dependence on capital gains realizations. Combined federal and state income taxes are already well above a marginal rate of 50% for high-earning California taxpayers. This burden makes the state less competitive and results in the net loss of tens of thousands of high-income taxpayers every year. In 2022 alone, the state lost, on net, over 60,000 individuals with incomes above $200,000. Proponents of the wealth tax often respond that it is “one-time,” as if this feature resolves the deeper issues associated with taxing net worth. On the contrary, a one-time wealth tax still requires the state to determine the fair market value of assets that are not regularly traded, including private equity stakes, closely held businesses, intellectual property, artwork and complex trust arrangements. Exempting real estate and retirement accounts does not eliminate these difficulties; it simply narrows the tax base while encouraging portfolio shifts into favored categories. Nor does the one-time framing eliminate the cash-flow problem. Much billionaire wealth exists in illiquid or semi-liquid form. Paying a 5% levy will often require selling equity or borrowing against assets. If assets are sold, capital gains taxes apply on top of the wealth tax. If prices later decline, no adjustment is made. Gains are taxed when convenient for the state, while losses are ignored. This asymmetry is not a technical detail but a defining feature of taxing paper wealth. Determining residency for high-net-worth individuals is notoriously contentious, and California has a long history of aggressive, and costly, residency disputes. When the stakes rise from millions of dollars to tens of billions, enforcement will not become cleaner or more predictable, but more adversarial. That reality alone should temper expectations about net revenue. Supporters argue that even if some revenue is lost to behavioral responses, the tax would still raise enough to justify its adoption. This claim assumes away the most important fiscal constraint California faces: Temporary revenue cannot sustainably finance long-term commitments, especially when it simultaneously undermines the broader tax base... the state’s spending growth has persistently outrun stable revenue growth. A one-time levy on a narrow, mobile base does not solve that problem. Economic theory demonstrates the downsides of wealth taxes, but such taxes are not merely a theoretical novelty. Over the past century, more than a dozen advanced economies have experimented with them. Most repealed them after discovering that they raised less revenue than projected, encouraged capital and taxpayer flight, and imposed substantial administrative costs. These outcomes were not accidents. They reflected the basic economics of taxing a base that is difficult to measure and highly responsive to incentives... The most telling feature of the current debate is that even political leaders who are otherwise sympathetic to higher taxes have expressed unease about state-level wealth taxation. California Governor Gavin Newsom, for example, has consistently opposed a state wealth tax. That hesitation reflects an implicit recognition of the underlying tradeoff. A fiscal system that depends heavily on a small number of high earners cannot treat their presence as immaterial."
Left wingers think people don't respond to incentives, and more generally have a static rather than dynamic view of the world
California’s wealth tax is a test case in America’s fall into socialism - "Newsom, and gentry liberals in general, bear great responsibility for a level of inequality in California estimated to be greater than that of Mexico. In particular, they have long embraced draconian climate policies, which have undermined the blue-collar economy, and driven up energy and home prices. The drive to “save the planet” – and the associated impact on costs – has surely contributed to California suffering the United States’ highest cost adjusted poverty rate and the highest unemployment rate in the country, as well elevated levels of unemployment for people under 30. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates that roughly 15 million people live in poverty or near-poverty. Once the land of opportunity, in recent years, the only jobs created in California were in government-financed health care and government itself. Newsom may attack states like Texas and Florida as unfair to the poor, yet immigrants as well as minorities seem to be doing better there. Unable or unwilling to foster broad-based economic growth, Newsom has tried to address the state’s enormous income disparity by building what the Nation praised as “the blue welfare state”. The goal has been to balance a highly unequal economy by lavishing ever greater subsidies on poorer Californians. California spends more of its budget on welfare than virtually any state, twice as much as arch-rival Texas by some measures. With revenues, and federal funds, now threatened by the movement of people and business to other parts of the US, the Left sees the wealth tax as a way to prop up that “blue” welfare state. This includes paying for such things as health care for undocumented migrants, not insignificant in a state where well over two million live in the netherworld of illegality. And where the foreign-born constitute more than a quarter of the population, the highest rate of any state."
Time to mock red states again
Chamath Palihapitiya on X - "Unfortunate update as of today: More calls from friends. The total wealth that has left California is now $1T. We had $2T of billionaire wealth just a few weeks ago. Now, 50% of that wealth has left - taking their income tax revenue, sales tax revenue, real estate tax revenue and all their staffs (and their salaries and income taxes) with them. In other words, by starting this ill conceived attempt at an asset tax, the California budget deficit will explode. And we still don’t know if the tax will even make the ballot. California billionaires were reliable tax payers - 13.3% every year. They were the sheep you could shear forever. Now California will lose this revenue source FOREVER. Unless this ballot initiative is pulled, we will not stop the billionaire exodus. With no rich people left in California, the middle class will have to foot the bill."
Taylor Budowich on X - "Over the last decade, California’s spending overall has doubled, while its population has stayed FLAT. The state’s education budget has doubled, while the number of students has DECLINED. Bloated budgets on the backs of billionaires. Now they’re gone. Think those will tighten the belt on spending? Not a chance. YOU, the Californian working class are next. While the rest of the country is seeing falling prices and cost of living, you’re in for a world of hurt. Want to fix it? Pass a real balanced budget fix and spending caps. Take back control of the state! It can be done and the time is NOW."
Left wing logic: intentions are more important than outcomes, and spending more money always leads to better results so if the results are bad it's proof not enough money was spent, but spending a lot shows that politicians care and have "empathy" so it's inherently good, and only monsters are against increasing spending
Los Angeles Times on X - "Commentary: California made them rich. Now billionaires flee when the state asks for a little something back."
Billy Binion on X - "This is one of the most predictable disasters in recent memory. Wealth taxes never work. People just…move their money elsewhere. These people made the state rich—not the other way around. Economically-illiterate nonsense."
Left wingers never say how much billionaires' 'fair share' is
Pop Base on X - "A petition for the California billionaire tax, which would implement a one-time 5% tax on the state's 200 billionaires to fund healthcare programs, has received 1.5 million signatures — which could help it qualify for the November ballot. Gavin Newsom shared that he was fighting against this amendment in a previous interview with The New York Times."
Aakash Gupta on X - "This is one of the dumbest tax proposals in California's history, and the math is so bad it embarrasses the people who wrote it. Start with the headline. SEIU promises $100B in revenue. California spends $161B a year on Medi-Cal alone. The entire windfall, if collected at face value, funds 7 months of one program. Then it's gone forever, and the structural deficit they claim to fix returns the day the check clears. Now the math gets uglier. The Hoover Institution estimates the permanent income tax loss from departing residents makes the net fiscal impact NEGATIVE by $25 billion. Read that twice. California sets fire to political capital, court costs, and capital flight to NET LOSE $25B. They're proposing to torch recurring revenue to fund 7 months of a program they've already underfunded for a decade. The exodus already happened. $700B in net worth wired out of California before January 1, 2026. Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Travis Kalanick gone. The remaining 208 billionaires aren't tech founders sitting on liquid stock. They're real estate, agriculture, entertainment, the people whose wealth is physically bolted to California. Mobile capital fled. Trapped capital pays. Read what San José mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat running for governor, said about this on KQED: "It will lead to middle-class people having to pay higher taxes in the long run." A Democratic gubernatorial candidate openly admitting the wealth tax is a regressive transfer to the middle class. That's the part proponents won't put on the signs. The legal exposure is worse. The proposal taxes wealth held as of January 1, 2026, retroactively, after voter approval in November 2026. Retroactive wealth taxation has never survived constitutional challenge in any US state. Washington's capital gains tax survived only because the state Supreme Court reclassified it as an excise tax. The poison-pill measure on the same November ballot bans retroactive taxation by constitutional amendment, funded by $80M from people who can afford the lawyers. Every wealthy democracy that tried this killed it. France's wealth tax drove out an estimated 42,000 millionaires and €100B in capital before they repealed it in 2017. Italy, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Finland, Iceland all tried wealth taxes. All repealed. California is about to vote on the experiment every comparable economy already ran and lost. The signatures are real. The math is fake. The capital is already gone."
Maria Davidson on X - "In 2016, California ran a $1bn surplus. In 2026, it'll be a $26bn deficit. All while California GDP grew by 50%."
Clearly, this is Trump's fault
Katie Miller on X - "Why even have elections if any district court judge can invalidate the Will of the People?"
bumbadum on X - "Your reminder that 60% of Californians voted to strip illegals of taxpayer funded programs and a judge said no."
Stephen Miller on X - "This is a severely underestimated fulcrum point in American history. During the nineties there was a great societal upheaval over mass migration. California voters, in the face of an onslaught of media demonization, acted to save their state by passing Prop 187 to end all public benefits for illegals. It was one of the most potent examples of popular democracy defeating entrenched corruption. It captivated the attention of the entire nation. Millions and millions of Californians voted to recapture their destiny. The proposition passed in a landslide. It was enjoined by a District Court judge IMMEDIATELY and remained enjoined permanently. Illegals continued flooding the state, consuming benefits, a Democrat (Gray Davis) won the next election and entered into a court settlement to halt the law forever."
Geeta Minocha on X - "Tech loves to complain about the decline of San Francisco. But tech’s apathy toward community reinvestment is one reason for it! Public banking is a tool the region can use to revitalize itself without waiting for industry to step in. Excellent stuff from @JackieFielder_."
Kane 謝凱堯 on X - "This is an incorrect trope that refuses to die. Tech has given SF the richest budget of any city-county in the USA. We spend more per capita than Copenhagen or Tokyo. There is no lack of “reinvestment”. It just gets squandered by the corruption and incompetence of local politicians and NGOs."
San Francisco Chronicle on X - "OPINION: California’s last remaining nuclear facility, scheduled to be shuttered in four years, provides 17% of California’s clean, carbon-free electricity."
Kane 謝凱堯 on X - "We have a technology so advanced that just six facilities can meet all the energy demands of California. Our plan is to shut down the one we have."
Monthanus Ratanapakdee on X - "After 3 years and 148 days since my father's tragic death, today the defendant showed no remorse, saying,”Your Honor, the rumor is I didn't kill him; he died two days later." His lack of guilt after nearly 4 years in jail is disturbing #JusticeForVictims #StopAsianHate #EndCrime"
Thread by @MissionLoco on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In San Francisco, you can do this to a complete stranger, solely based on the fact that he’s old and an easy mark, and get away with it — because this judge believes, and I am pretty much quoting, “Prison wouldn’t be a good experience” for the murderer. And of course the @sfdefender is gloating about this horrific decision. They suppressed the murderer’s long violet criminal history. He’s a raging psychopath who had to be kept in solitary during his time in jail. He will kill again."
Kevin Dalton on X - "A hoard of felons took their sweet time looting the jewelry district in Los Angeles for hours. No enforcement from LAPD. No leadership from Gavin Newsom"
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "EXCLUSIVE: Multiple senior HHS officials estimate that, under Gavin Newsom, California's state Medicaid program has lost 25 percent of its budget to fraud. This would mean it is currently losing $50 billion a year to scammers, fraudsters, and organized crime rings."
The Missing Data Depot on X - "The scale of the fraud reported here is staggering. California is losing $50 billion a year to Medi-Cal fraud alone. That's more than 29 states spend on their entire budgets."
Jesse Kelly on X - "Any jurisdiction under Democrat rule is essentially a cartel. The government will work directly with lower organizations in an effort to loot the treasury."
Left wingers want unlimited welfare spending, because that increases the opportunity to skim it off, legally (through non-profits, vendors etc) or illegally
The Wall Street Journal on X - "A century-old entertainment economy is evaporating in Los Angeles with no signs of a turnaround on the horizon."
Jesse Kelly on X - "If you’ve even flown into Los Angeles, you understand how gorgeous and perfect Southern California is. It’s takes a superhuman effort to make that paradise a place where nobody wants to live or do business. But communists were up to the task."
Time to tax the 'rich' and 'greedy businesses' even more
California Is Falling Behind On Jobs: Can It Move Beyond The Crossroads? - "While the state has become known for its mounting troubles, at least the California economy is growing. But all isn’t as well as it might seem. When compared the rest of the country, California’s jobs market is one of the weakest. Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show California’s total employment is stuck at a little more than 18 million. It’s of course the largest number in the nation, but there’s been no growth, with total non-farm employment falling 0.1% from December 2024 to December 2025. Texas, Florida and other red states that have been villainized by California politicians posted gains. To be fair, employment fell harder in 11 states, but if California were the economic powerhouse of its earned-long-ago reputation, then, outside of recessions, job growth should be a permanent condition. “The adverse consequences are becoming harder to ignore,” says PRI senior fellow WayneWinegarden. “Job growth is stagnant and the number of non-health-related private-sector jobs is in outright decline even though the domestic economy is not in recession.”"
Deceitful So Cal Gas Water Heater Ban Back - "They are coming for your gas-powered car, your gas stove, your gas water heater, your gas furnace, your gas dryer, your gas grille, your gas blower, your gas fireplace, and any other gas-powered appliance or vehicle you can think of... California is set to become the first state to ban natural gas heaters, water heaters, and furnaces by 2030, a policy of the California Air Resources Board, entirely made up of appointees by the governor... These groups were behind the Biden administration’s attempt to ban gas stoves and gas appliances, together with the International Code Council... Why do they keep coming back with gas appliance bans? Wynne Armand, MD in September 2022 claimed “Cooking with gas stoves creates nitrogen dioxide and releases additional tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5, both of which are lung irritants. Nitrogen dioxide has been linked with childhood asthma. During 2019 alone, almost two million cases worldwide of new childhood asthma were estimated to be due to nitrogen dioxide pollution.” Total rubbish. As we’ve reported for many years, Dr. James Enstrom of UCLA long ago debunked the PM2.5 epidemiology. He found no robust relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality. However, this claim about these airborne particles have been used for decades by the government and American Cancer Society “as the primary justification for many costly regulations, most recently the Clean Power Plan,” as Dr. Enstrom explained. The SCAQMD members and the above rent-seeking organizations don’t care if it bankrupts you or causes you undue hardship. They don’t care if your public transit system is a hellhole on rails, when they take away your gas-powered car. They don’t care if you have to walk 5 miles to work. They don’t care. Just remember that they don’t care about you. They only care about their autocratic rules – and power."
Meme - "California
*Couple with baby in stroller*
Man: BUT THE WEATHER IS SO GOOD THO..."
*annoyed woman and crying baby*
*Hobo with tent and broken shoe and can in front of him, shit on pavement, man shitting on pavement with piss on pavement, bare feet from dead [?] body lying on pavement, hobo shooting up on pavement, black man attacking white man*"
skepticalifornia on X - "> Los Angeles: medieval disease
> San Francisco: worse than slums in India or Brazil
> San Diego: bleach to combat sidewalk hepatitis
Progressives have succeeded at regressing California to a third-world state"
Time to blame Republicans and Trump
Wall Street Apes on X - "Los Angeles homeless project called ‘The Restoration Apartments’ were purchased for $5.3 million in 2020. 80 units were promised and now 6 years later, not a single unit is available. The property sits abandoned. More California money laundering
Clearly, the problem was that they didn't spend enough money, and if you're against spending more money, you're heartless and lack "empathy" and are a terrible person
Los Angeles Times on X - "L.A. County lost 54,000 residents last year—the largest numeric drop in the nation. With birth rates falling and international migration plummeting by 68%, experts warn of a crisis that could "haunt us for decades.""
Gregory Kennedy on X - "LA be like: We will tax restaurants into oblivion. But illegal street food is fine. We can't effectively put out forest fires. You will pay extra for the rich who lost their homes in the Pacific Pallisade fires. We banned plastic straws. The sidewalk tent meth lab, not an issue. Used drug needles litter the street. That's your problem when you walk your dog. Massive fraud, everywhere. We are also going to tax your Pokémon card collection. Housing is too expensive. No, you can't build anything there. That parking lot is a sacred burial ground. We bought our home in 1972 and pay almost no tax. HAHA, too bad for you. We were here first. Endless talk about sustainability. The entire city sits in a car for hours, burning gas to drive four miles to get a coffee. Your block had three break-ins, two assaults, and a fire. The best we can do is a poorly executed mural. We are pro-worker. Unless it's not on a laptop, and you need a permit. If you're doing 'real work', you can F... off! We know there are problems. This is why we created another committee, with no authority, that will waste millions on bogus research. Wait... where did everyone go?"
