This is probably good in some sense - you can argue that it's not healthy for states like CA to "own" so much of GDP end-to-end - but I wonder where this leads us in a couple of decades. Does it continue to be like this, or does it mean that more tech hubs pop up elsewhere because in the long haul, people probably prefer to work and invest close to home?
A big problem is that some of these places - e.g., Wyoming - don't have the higher-ed infrastructure that would foster new startups and high-tech research. On the flip side, California is now importing most of its entrepreneurs anyway.
So, the source of the problem isn't federal, its wealth inequality.
Wall street and silicon valley folks are not as well liked outside those bubbles as those in the bubbles might think...
What we really need is a federal law that says states can't entice businesses to move or stay in some place using monetary bribes in the form of company-specific tax cuts. Reducing this manipulation could help tax revenues instead of states competing to be lowest bidder.
This is a little misleading as written (with a 2026 timestamp but citing only 2023 data) given there is a wealth tax on the California ballot and wealth migration is cited as a reason to oppose it. This article looks like it supports that argument, but it doesn't.
Florida migration boom fades as rising costs push residents out - https://www.axios.com/local/tampa-bay/2026/04/24/florida-aff... - April 24th, 2026
Per Apollo Group, ~31% of wealth is owned by the 70+ cohort, and they move to the sunbelt to retire and die usually.
31% of Wealth Owned by People Over 70 - https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-... - December 7th, 2025
~230k people die every year in Florida for reference.
https://usafacts.org/answers/what-are-the-leading-causes-of-...
(overall, ~2M people 55+ die every year in the US, ~5k per day)
AI slop everywhere.
This is going to sound wild - but hear me out: you pay taxes in equity the moment you get it.
'Shares are income' - so you got 1M shares in a company you made, the tax is, 1/3 or whatever - and then you never pay taxes on cap gains from that again.
You might be able to control liquidity, but when it's liquid it goes to the state etc..
That way taxes are captured appropriately and where wealth is created.
It just feels extra odd that you incorporate a company and immediatley gov. gets 1/2 or whatever - but that is the case the moment it goes into your pocket as $ anyhow.
Consider the idea of income tax. You get paid. You pay tax. The money after that is yours. Billionaires have the same thing. They make a lot early and then "retire" but then people still look at their bank account and want more years later. This idea that a billionaire has no income years later seems unfair to people even though really it makes all the sense in the world. They don't need income anymore. Duh. They already paid all the income taxes on it years prior.
So yes they will absolutely leave. And then yes you will have a massive budget hole. And then your taxes will go up because the state got greedy.
Also, it would be interesting to see these absolute figures as a percentage of overall income.
There’s some manifold of Pareto-optimal solutions to the problem of taxes and services.
California, for example, spends a lot of money to get not-great public schools, and has housing costs that are out of control. So if you’re importing new hires from other states, and pay them a lot to live here, and personally pay high taxes on top of that… that doesn’t seem like a Pareto-optimal point.
At some point, the wealthy will decide to move someplace that looks more Pareto-optimal. Better externalities, lower taxes, or both.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/issue-brief/what-a-new-laffer-c...
FTA: For years, policymakers and economists have debated the shape and peak of the Laffer curve, a theoretical model suggesting that if top tax rates increase beyond a certain point—called the revenue-maximizing rate—they will yield negative marginal revenue.
A new paper from economists at the Joint Committee on Taxation finds that the Laffer curve is flatter than previous theories have suggested, meaning the revenue-maximizing “rate” might be a broad range rather than a single point.
Lawmakers looking to raise taxes might find it difficult to raise substantial revenue from top rate increases; however, broadening the base, examining untaxed sectors, and reducing the tax gap represent promising pathways to closing the gap between revenue and spending.
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I'm glad they highlighted that instead of increasing the tax rate, broaden the tax base. For example, if they treated borrow-spend-die as income. We could keep a lower tax rate. The same argument could be made for eliminating the estate tax. Treat inheritances as income for tax purposes.
It is a fiscal detriment to CA and NY though.
Ah yes, the government services the people will need after these locusts move in and price generations of locals out of their homes.
They rely massively on government services. They depend on an educated workforce. They depend on law and order to prevent their workplaces from bandits. They depend on massive navies that allow goods to be shipped across the world without concern. They depend on courts to enforce contracts so that they can build their business on contracts rather than having to establish personal trust with everybody they do business with. They depend on a stable currency. They depend on a regulated finance market. They depend on a massive pacified customer base.
I've only scratched the surface, there's lots more.
When a billionaire moves to Wyoming, the marginal tax revenue is far greater than the marginal cost of police services, for example.
When Washington was a low tax state, it spawned Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks, Costco, Nordstrom, T Mobile, Expedia, etc.
Being hospitable is more about whether the state makes it a pain in the ass to do business.
Taxes are the least worst part of doing business. It's all the other subjectively defined and capriciously enforced regulatory BS that drives business away. You can't run a business let alone get financing to create one when a huge chunk of your costs are a question mark.
Every state offers wealthy people a good place to live - the suggestion that somehow this is a trade off is very wrong.
This has a lot to do with taxes.
But it’s not, and that doesn’t feel worth it.
I know one literally one person in my highschool graduating class who stayed behind. Sure the older generation are still left for the most part, still not admitting they did anything to cause the situation, but the young and ambitious have all left.
Think about that the fact that the entire population of a place has basically been replaced in under a generation, and with people who are chasing dollars and clout not people who are building communities. (And no this isn't about immigrants, Cali was always full of people from everywhere, it's about the personality that it attracts now.)
We all left and built other communities and business elsewhere because the place quite clearly told us we were not wanted there.
I'm not sure why people keep repeating fabricated GDP like it's some measure of success, especially when its completly measured on non-tangible products like the California economy.
Cali compared to Cali 40/50/100 years ago is wasteland and it pisses me off every day.
Wyoming is an interesting case with Higher Ed. It's actually the legislature that runs UW. There isn't a regent board or some such thing. Hence, with many other priorities, the Cowboys don't get that much time in the minds of their bosses.
It's one of the many many wrinkles that come along with the many college football issues these days. Any formation of a players union or draft or much of any real professionalization of the sport has to go through so many different governance formations (regents, governors, the Catholic Church, etc). As such, the many issues with college ball are likely to continue for a long time and fester.
Its a bad investment for your average homeowner considering forward curve of equity return and carrying costs, but its the cost of lifestyle if you're wealthy.
From my Axios citation in a sibling comment:
- "The changing affordability situation has led to a shrinking supply of working-age newcomers, who are key to filling jobs and stoking demand for housing, retail and services," the piece says.
- "Florida depends heavily on such sectors, as it lacks big industries that generate an abundance of high-paying jobs."
Florida migration slowed sharply in 2025, with mid-sized counties continuing to grow - https://news.ufl.edu/2026/07/florida-migration/ - July 13th, 2026
(Florida real estate houses on the market and price direction/velocity is a leading indicator of demand imho)
For example, I don't carry collision insurance for my car. Over the years, I've saved enough on that that totaling the car still leaves me ahead financially.
It's why I don't buy such things as appliance insurance.
That puzzles me because people have figured out how to build hurricane proof homes there, and it's neither hard nor expensive.
I'm a snow person that could not imagine life without 4 seasons, but as I get older I'm starting to 'get it' a bit.
It also doesn't take a lot of people for those transfers to show up in big numbers.
It's very different than the south or west texas.
See: https://www.floridabar.org/public/consumer/pamphlet008/
At a glance, it looks like Chapter 7 bankruptcy is what I was remembering. There are significant exemptions for property, and the more recent amendments to the law to protect against abuse by wealthy individuals are laughably based on income.
It looks pretty easy to buy up a bunch of property in Florida, live there for two years to become eligible for the property exemptions, then declare Chapter 7 to wipe away outstanding debts with minimal-to-no losses.
Of course, respondents are free to correct me if I've misinterpreted something. My initial thought was based on hearsay, and my interpretation was based off quick skimming :)
For a cohort of people who are on the road for work 25% of the time and/or own 2-5 homes, the concept of primary residence is mostly just a legal term. Can they sign a tax return to NYS/NYC tax authorities that they spent 183 days outside the state/city? Lots of people cheat on their taxes.
Therefore there's a wide spectrum of gray in terms of rich NYers "moving to Florida".
First guy I talked to at an NYC tech conference yesterday gave me a business card with his Miami work address (and NYC phone number..) after spending 5 minutes talking about how lived in the same NYC hood.
I know several NYers at/near retirement who plan to: sell NYC primary residence, buy a residence in Florida (change IDs, etc), then after 1 year of seasoning rent back a place in NYC they plan to spend as close to the 182 days/year in NYC that keeps them in tax compliance.
soared•56m ago
What is the age of the average Florida 2026 transplant? Couldn’t this just be near-retiree boomers moving to Florida, which doesn’t really indicate much?
What are these numbers compared to years prior? Do they fluctuate, or are they a continuous trend?
How much of the California and Texas numbers are caused by a small number of individuals (the Elon effect)?
bilbo0s•54m ago
the numbers in the chart, for instance, are from 2023.
linkjuice4all•44m ago
Overall this isn't really a bad thing - if people want to vote with their feet then have at it. California continues to be a nice place to live and do business (non-competes) so I'm sure people will continue to live there. Everyone else can have Texas, Florida, and Tennessee and all of the, uh, benefits of living in those places and interacting with those state and local governments.
cucumber3732842•8m ago