High taxes results in wealthy people leaving California.... so California raised them even higher

I have never had the opportunity to live in California and the way things have been in the past decade or so I feel zero urge to do so. If the company I work for attempted to relocate me there I would fight it with every fiber of my being.

I was once dating a girl that lived in Los Angeles and I visited her a few times before we split up because long-distance relationships don't work. I'd love to tell you a few things about LA but the only thing I really remember about the place is her extremely expensive yet very basic apartment and being stuck in traffic ALL THE TIME.

During the 2nd trip and on our 2nd hour in traffic just to go to dinner somewhere nice I turned and asked her "why do you live here? This is awful!" and this is the opinion I have about that state to this day. Of course I have heard better things about other parts of it and the state is gigantic so it isn't fair to generalize about the entire state based on just a couple of cities that I visited.

I have heard celebrities and wealthy people over the years complaining about something that I never experienced as a middle-class person though and that was how unreal expensive it is to live there because of taxes and regulations The two most famous examples are probably Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, who both moved out of the state because they were just fed up with the way things are run there.

The population of California is one of the only states in USA that has been steadily dropping since 2020 with over 75,000 people leaving the state in 2023. I suppose this wouldn't be that big of a deal and could benefit the traffic example that I was referring to earlier, but the real problem, at least from a quality of life for all Californians is concerned is that of these 75,000, most of them were relatively affluent members of society with high education and high income. Therefore the state ended up missing out on a great deal of tax revenue.

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I think that everyone just presumes that California would have one of the highest tax rates in the nation and if you are one of the people that presumed that, congratulations because you are correct. The rate that was previously the highest in the nation at 13.3% was outrageous when you keep in mind that we haven't even started talking about federal taxes yet. That is just the state tax rate.

So the ultra-wealthy who don't necessarily need to live there have packed up and left and ended up keeping a lot more of their money than they would be able to if they stayed. It makes sense to me!

My apologies to any Californians out there, but I feel like the government there just gets everything wrong and even though they are very aware of the fact that wealthy residents are fleeing the country in droves the response the government had to this was to RAISE taxes to 14.4%. Of course this is just for the highest earners, but when we look at all other tax brackets which vary wildly from state to state in percentages as well as where the crossover point happens, California is still the highest in the nation in nearly every metric.

According to wealth management firms the number one affluent group that is departing the state are people that are about to retire. They have been putting money into retirement funds their entire lives and haven't been taxed on it yet in most situations and they wisely would prefer to not be paying a huge chunk of it to California.

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This should concern the California government a great deal more than it appears to be especially since as of now they are operating at a nearly $70 billion deficit and these are just projections, it could actually be much much worse when the time comes to foot the bill..... who am I kidding this is the government! They never have to actually foot the bill do they?

Normally I only focus on the poor journalism standards and I will go ahead and do a bit of that. Gavin Newsome is overseeing the state at the moment and well, While I am sure it isn't exclusively his fault that this is going on he is essentially the CEO while all of this is going on and his solution to people fleeing the state is to make what is forcing them to leave even worse? Who voted for this guy?

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_{none of these regulations affect him much so what does he care?}

The media paints this guy as a flawless darling going so far as to say that he has a real chance at being President one day and there was even talk about him being Joe Biden's replacement for 2024 elections. The sad thing is that such a switch would probably work out for the DNC because people don't really seem to give a shit that under his leadership California has seen record-breaking drops in things that are good like affluence and business development, and record-breaking rises in things like crime.

The people had a chance to remove him a bit ago, but of course the media slammed the conservative that sought to replace him because Democrat = GOOD and Republican= BAD in the eyes of the media.

Polls done on the guy show that the opinion of him is overwhelmingly positive and of course these polls are rigged but who thinks that this guy is doing a good job? If you live in California can you think of anything that he has done that has benefitted the people of the state?

Once all the private rich folk flee to Texas, Arizona, and Florida, the only thing that Cali will be left with is a bunch of unaffordable real estate in the Hollywood hills and a ton of people who aren't paying taxes at all anyway. I exaggerate of course but this is something that the leaders of California should be seriously looking at because they are in for a world of hurt if they continue down this path.... but then again, this is America and when the government operates at a loss you just borrow more and more and more money and never pay it back... right?