Millionaires? Maybe not. Perhaps they can absorb the added burden. But folks in the $250K range will leave. In the CA economy, $250 isn’t really that much.
Wow. They are delusional.
Do the morons at the LA Times really not understand that $250k is not a million?
Not true, I know of one who finally had enough and moved to Vegas. It’s not just a 1% problem but the fact that you’re paying 13% of your income for the privilege of living in CA. For a millionaire that’s $130,000, that’s not chump change even for the wealthy and they will move out if they can.
Why is it the people that think raising the tax rate by 1% every year has no negative effects are the very same people that think atmospheric CO2 rising by 0.01% over 100 years will cause the total destruction of life on Earth?
Leftists are not so hot with pattern recognition.
Not too long ago, when taxes were being strongly hiked in New Jersey, the left said that it would not make high income taxpayers leave. Some 20,000 taxpayers did leave, and it cost the state economy $2.5 billion in gross income.
Hawaii, New York, Oregon and Maryland also raised rates on high earners during in the 2000s, and the left said that it would not drive out millionaires. But other than a LOT of anecdotal evidence that it did, there was no real effort by economists to document it. For some reason.
Very recently in France, hiking the tax on the rich by a huge amount, the left still insisted that it would not drive out the wealthy. It did, in a big sort of way. But the French left are still in denial about it.
So along with its crushing government over-regulation, very high prices, and nanny-statism about everywhere, the left still does not grasp the obvious. But if the people of California are smart, a good question, will they decide to put yet another nail in their economic coffin?
A few things to consider.
1. Those over 250k generally have good jobs but may not be able to re-locate because of difficulty in finding an equal or better job or because of the difficulty in selling their house w/o taking a big loss. This is job lock and housing lock.
2. Consumer spending is lower because it is displaced by higher taxes. Small business operates under smaller margins and cannot afford to expand business and hire workers. This increases unemployment, out migration and lowers government revenue.
3. The super wealthy already have multiple residences and can claim residence, with the help of their accountant, in low or no tax states.
If Romney is elected, and the overall US economy improves, the differences between the pro- business and anti-business states will become more evident. Then we could see a real exodus from CA for all those people in the productive sector.
In that case, we should just institute a 100% tax on all incomes in the state! We could call it the “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” tax policy.