I was talking to a friend about the billionaire's tax and this issue came up. Here's how I see it: either individually wealthy people stay here, and we take their money to build state capacity to even out the distortions created by their wealth, or, they leave, and the distortions fix themselves.

The easiest one to point to is property prices. Wealthy people buy land, and drive up the price of land and rent for everyone else. If a lot of people suddenly make a lot of money in San Francisco, in general, for me and most of the people I know, there's no "rising tide" that lifts our boats. Our income remains the same, but our rent goes up, and maybe our lives don't make sense anymore, and we have to move.

But if there's a wealth tax, and it encourages rich people to leave the state? Awesome. Go drive up rents in Texas or Montana or somewhere else. Or pay the tax, and then the state can use that money to build affordable housing.

Before you say anything: I lived through the 90s, and you can't trick me with "WOW YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT CAN DO THINGS? WHAT ABOUT THE DMV???" Go somewhere else.

I don't think that makes sense. The wealth tax, as written affects a pretty small percentage of "rich people". Most "rich people" will not pay a wealth tax.

So sure, let's say for the sake of your argument that everyone who would be subject to the wealth tax moves away. That won't move the needle when it comes to housing affordability in California.

So, ok, change the wealth tax so it applies to a lot more people. Ok, so maybe more people leave. Do you really think driving people with money out of your state will actually be good for you and the state? That's just not how economics works.

> "...WHAT ABOUT THE DMV???"

And I'd ask them: "What about the DMV?".

Perhaps I'm uniquely able to read and understand simple instructions, or maybe I've never asked the DMV to do anything especially complicated, but I've never had the DMV fail to do what I came there to have it do for me. The worst I've gotten from a DMV was having to wait for literally an entire day when I made the mistake of going to the San Francisco DMV to get something done, rather than doing the smart thing and going to an office in one of the nearby towns. It's... very stupid that there's a single DMV office for a city of -last I checked- nearly a million people.

> or, they leave, and the distortions fix themselves.

It's always funny how often people ignore this. 99% of the problem would go away if the outliers moved away.