Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
Despite having the highest taxes in the country and demonizing the rich for decades, California Democrats have begun to wonder why the wealthiest people have begun to leave the state.
The story of the “One Percent™” has been used by Democrats so often that most people can now quote it verbatim. Either they are the greedy CEOs cutting checks and massive bonuses for themselves while the working class suffers or they are the people that pay incredibly low taxes by abusing loopholes and hiding their massive wealth. If you ask most folks on the left, they would likely say that the One Percent™ encompasses both.
However, neither of these ideas is true and due to rhetoric and policies based on this premise, massive amounts of relatively wealthy people are leaving the state, which will certainly doom the economy given long enough.
It must be noted that California’s top one percent of income earners pay at least 46 percent of income taxes in the state. Despite this fact, Democrats will attempt to squeeze more money out of successful Californians, encouraging them to leave, which leads to exactly the situation mentioned above.
Not only are California’s wealthy paying nearly half of the income taxes, but they are also likely paying nearly all of it. Looking at data for the entire United States, the top 20 percent are the only ones that pay any significant level of taxes after government transfers. Not to mention that the bottom 60 percent of income earners don’t pay anything at all. With California having the largest welfare state in the country and half of all households using government assistance, the wealthy are likely bankrolling the state.
Given this information, California Democrats have the most predictable response imaginable: tax the rich more! Wealthy Californians are leaving, as demonstrated by the state’s negative population trend and many are going to states that have much less regulation and don’t take as much of their wealth.
This is a problem that the government needs to address before too many people leave because given long enough, major economic hardship will inevitably result. Then again, that’s probably the fault of the nefarious One Percenters™ too.
