Megan Basham

Everyone is leaving California.

Yeah, so what it would do, Georgia, is impose a one-time 5% tax on the total net worth of anyone who was a California resident on January 1st, 2026, and also happens to be worth more than a billion dollars.

So if a billionaire leaves the state before the measure passes...

supporters still want to tax any wealth accumulated while they lived there.

So backers say that this money would help close California's budget gap and also fund things like health care, education, and anti-poverty programs.

But on the other side, critics are arguing that California doesn't have a revenue problem so much as it has a spending problem.

In fact, Morning Wire spoke to Andrew Wilford of the National Taxpayers Union Foundation yesterday

And he points out that California already taxes top earners more heavily than anywhere else in the country.

And then on top of that, Wilford argues that this isn't just another income tax.

It's a fundamentally different concept where the government taxes assets that people already own.

So things like stock holdings, businesses, investments, even if they haven't sold them yet.

So he and other critics say that this could trigger an exodus of entrepreneurs and investors.

And, you know, to a pretty large degree, California is already seeing that.

So Google co-founder Sergey Brin, for instance, fled the Soviet Union as a child.

And he told the New York Times that he compares this proposal to Soviet-style socialism.

And he has already moved assets out of the state.

So has Google co-founder Larry Page.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, PayPal's Peter Thiel, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and even others beyond them.

So they've either left California or they're relocating companies and homes to places like Florida, Nevada, or Texas.

And reports suggest that nearly 30% of the potential tax base that this new tax would be targeting has already departed before that January 1st deadline.