California is chasing wealth that has feet

The Center for Land Economics full report can be found here ; our op-ed on the same argument ran in the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday .

Last week California certified a Billionaire Wealth Tax for the November ballot: a 5 percent one-time levy on the state’s billionaires, paid out over five years, to raise about $20 billion a year for health care, food aid, and schools after federal cuts. We understand the impulse. The state has a revenue hole, and billionaires can afford to help fill it.

Support more work like this by subscribing. Consider being a paid subscriber.

But the tax will fail at the thing it’s for, and it will fail for a simple reason: billionaires, unlike land, have feet.