It really is a lovely place, California, but it’s so disastrously misgoverned now that the Left has gained total control over the state that it’s no surprise that people want to flee it as quickly as they can. Now, however, it turns out that the Eagles’ Don Henley and Glenn Frey saw something coming that the rest of the world missed: in their notorious 1977 song “Hotel California,” they say: “You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave.”
That wasn’t just some nightmare scenario of the coked-out beautiful people in Malibu; it was a foretaste of a new proposal from California’s Marxist party, a.k.a. the Democrats. You can hate California’s nanny-state socialism, high taxes, rampant homelessness, and ever-rising crime, but if you’ve ever lived there, you could be subsidizing it all for the rest of your life. Yes, even if you escape.
Fox News reported Monday that “California lawmakers are pushing legislation that would impose a new tax on the state’s wealthiest residents — even if they’ve already moved to another part of the country.” So you see, if you are unfortunate enough to be living in San Francisco and don’t want to be made to finance the city’s insane new scheme to give five million dollars in “reparations” to its black residents, it may already be too late to dodge that particular socialist bullet. You can check out and go to Idaho, or Arizona, or even sunny, free, DeSantis-ruled but incomparably more humid Florida, but the California taxman will hunt you down and knock on your door anyway. You can check out, my friend, but no, you can never leave.
Assemblyman Alex Lee, whom Fox News identifies as a “progressive Democrat,” as if we might have mistaken him for an America-First patriot, “last week introduced a bill in the California State Legislature that would impose an extra annual 1.5% tax on those with a ‘worldwide net worth’ above $1 billion, starting as early as January 2024.” See, ex-Californians? You have nothing, nothing whatsoever, to worry about. If you’re not a billionaire, you don’t have the slightest reason to worry about rogue agents from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration breaking down your front door at 4 a.m. and frog-marching you to the nearest ATM so you can do your bit to fund their latest mad scheme to confiscate even more of the dwindling number of remaining Californians’ hard-earned dough. You’re free and clear, no? No.
For one thing, you’re a lot closer to being a billionaire than you might think, but not in a good way. If Old Joe Biden’s inflation keeps up or (God forbid) accelerates, we may be walking around with wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread, like in those old pictures from the Weimar Republic. It may before too long take a billion or two to buy a carton of eggs if the current madness keeps up. You could end up becoming a billionaire while actually suffering a decline in earning power and standard of living.
And then there is the ever-present reality that politicians lie, especially when it comes to taxes. Sure, Alex Lee’s new ex-Californians tax is only going to be for the very rich, and they’re not like you and me. But taxes have a way of trickling down, far more efficiently than earnings ever did. It wouldn’t surprise anyone in the entire world if this tax that is only going to be for billionaires ends up being charged to middle-class and lower-middle-class Californians and ex-Californians before the car is even loaded for the move to Nevada. After all, San Francisco has a lot of black millionaires to make, and once that lovely city is full of these newly-minted rich people, ever more taxes are going to be needed to sustain them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
You can’t have actually assumed that if you left the Golden State in your rearview mirror that it would actually leave you, did you? That’s why socialist states build walls, to keep their people in, so they don’t have to go to the trouble of chasing them all over the world in order to keep on bleeding them dry.
And so we know what’s coming next: a wall around California to stop the population hemorrhage and shore up Gavin Newsom’s wildly implausible but so-crazy-it-just-might-work presidential hopes. If Newsom does become president, watch for the wall to go up, finally, on the Mexican border. But it’ll be to keep people in, not out.
Snuffy Carter says
I don’t think this proposed Cal. tax on escapees will have a chance of becoming law. Comrade Newsom tried a similar tax on Cal. State retired workers in the past and that measure was struck down by the courts. Cal. has a state income tax. Comrade Newsom announced a few years ago that he was going to make his retired State workers that received a State pension check pay the Cal. state income tax on their pension for life even if they moved to another State once retired. The State workers sued over this and won. The judge probably had to bite his tongue to prevent himself from laughing in Newsom’s face for having such a stupid idea.
Steven Christie says
If it does, all us expat Commifonians should file class action lawsuit against Sacto
John says
Ventura Highway (America) air blowing in your hair driving North on 101..most drivers not thinking about TAXES!
The Reconquista is in the DNA as its in the air…do at do at do.
The Missions of the Jesuits through Northern California will succeed with the Governor and President Polk is but a racist.
Noah Andeark says
Keeping with the tunes theme……
All the streets are brown, and the sky is grey
Be careful where you walk, especially by the bay
No one’s safe and warm, living in LA
California Dreamin’, has met its dying day
Spurwing Plover says
California has become a micro monarchy with King Newsom the waster ruining it all and those who still kiss his rings and surrender their freedom to feel secure but get no security and we up here in Northern California the Sate of Jefferson which also includes Southern Oregon
Justin Swingle says
WHAT WOULD BE AMERICA’S COAST TO COAST HOMELESS CRISIS IF THERE WASN’T ALSO AN ILLEGALS CRISIS?
Rents Spike for Americans as Biden’s Migrants Fill Apartments
“These trends on wages not keeping up with rents are exactly what anyone with a morsel of common sense knows will happen if immigration levels are too high,” said Andrew Good, at NumbersUSA.com. He added:
The American Dream for today’s Americans will only be pushed further out of reach unless we get serious about changing course. It is critically important that we reduce immigration unless we want to [change from] a middle class nation to a nation of renters.”
Wallace says
How would they legally be able to collect taxes from people who have already left the state?? How would they have any power to tax people who have moved?
Floyd says
NY taxes people who work and live out of state. They work remotely and still have to pay. NY companies are also forced to pay for “benefits” for them.
steven christie says
The US government makes its expat citizens pay income tax. So for those living in some countries, they pay income tax twice; once to the country they are living, and again to WDC.
Maha says
They can’t take money from people who no longer reside in the state.
Noah Andeark says
Actually….they can.
https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2005/2005-02413.html
TRex says
Such an act of desperation. If this were to pass, California will become a state consisting of a government and its dependents, only. Everyone else will be gone. All it will take is for the dependents to outnumber those who have fled the state. I see California as a microcosm of the rest of the U.S. The people no longer have any say in what the government does and is, therefore, unaccountable. If this continues there will soon be nowhere to flee. Then what?
Mo de Profit says
Mirrors on the ceiling,
Pink champagne on ice,
We are all just prisoners here,
Of our own device.
You still vote for them.
steve christie says
The American revolution was fought because the colonists were sick of “taxation without representation by the monarch of England, but at least they remained British citizens up until 1776 when they revolted and declared independence. This California wealth tax law would be akin to England still demanding them to pay it taxes AFTER the revolution when they no longer remained British. I left California two years ago and would tell Sacramento to stuff it except for the fact that my stupid family still lives in CA and I’ll eventually have to go through LAX or SFO on my way to somewhere else – and with a digital ID they would nab me on the spot. Im going to be writing my governor and asking him to start considering secession.
L C says
These things always start as a tax on the super rich. But they always ratchet down to lower levels. The goal is the middle class, because there just aint enough billionaires who flee the state.
Other times its an “emergency” 2 year tax. But they never go away. They eventually become permanent.
NY is another state who goes by the philosophy that fleeing the state is no excuse to cease paying taxes to NY. Kinda like dying is no excuse to cease voting D in perpetuity. They have an entire audit group chasing non residents. But, I’ve yet to see anything to indicate if they actually bring in more than is spent on the audit group. Better yet, how about lowering tax rates and see a substantial increase in taxes actually collected. But that violates their religion of higher taxes are good for you. So, that won’t happen.