I consider this fine, because proponents of a wealth tax consistently omit that it will ultimately be the middle class who pays the tax... the ultra-wealthy and wealthy can afford sophisticated strategies to render a wealth tax ineffective against them, and if that doesn't work they can just move somewhere else. Income tax was the same.
We have been doing this exact experiment in Seattle sine 2024 when Bozos moved out. And last month Howard Schultz moved out as well. The sky did not fall.
Another example- did the average Londoner get better off when Russian oligarch parked their money in London in early 2000s? And likewise - was the average Londoner worse off when that money was frozen in Jan 2022 when Ukrainian war started? Not really…
Many other businesses that are not large enough to interest the newspaper are moving out as well.
Starbucks announced they would open a large corporate office in Tennessee. It could be called a 2nd headquarters reasonably.
Brilliant.
The commonly scapegoated cities in the United States are not experiencing third world conditions. Appalachia is experiencing third world conditions. Hollowed out rust belt cities in the Midwest are experiencing third world conditions. These areas are not run by lefty politicians. The United States has a systemic problem, not a local one.
And yes, the systemic problem is that there are a tiny number of ultra wealthy people with wildly outsized influence on the government of the United States, doing everything they can to reduce the amount they need to pay in taxes while simultaneously ensuring they extract the maximum amount of profit from the US government's wildly excessive expenditures.
You can tell this is true because property values have plummeted and nobody wants to live there any more, right? Or, since that’s not true at all, possibly the people who craft the media you consume are not being fully honest.
Just look at Oregon for example. It’s a lot like WA state but without the billionaires. And it is a really nice place to live. If WA state ends up like Oregon I won’t mind.
Some of the mechanisms are loopholes, that might be closed l. But many start to interact with international business regulations that exist for considered reasons, and are harder to change even if it is serving as a loophole.
You end up with only the small wealth (one lifetime as a skilled professional) group getting caught
Nobody needs these billionaires; we can create new billionaires and new products. They think they bring some sort of ultra speciality but in reality they are doing something millions want to do and their monopolistic success is preventing others from succeeding; knocking these giants down makes rooms for new businesses and products. This is the entire thrust of a capitalistic economy.
