I don't think anybody has a problem with investing in their community, but when there's no return on an investment you cut your losses and move on.
Tent cities, rolling blackouts, no healthcare, no public transportation. What are you getting for the taxes?
I moved to Hong Kong this year. Public health care, amazing public transportation, no tent cities[1], and the top tax rate is 17%. It's not perfect, but this idea that the solution to every societal problem is just to pay more and more taxes is nonsense.
California has the highest taxes in the country. If the quality of life there is worse than in states with lower taxes, then it's time to start questioning how that tax money is spent, not shovel more of it into a black hole that isn't doing anything.
[1] I won't say there's no homeless, because I don't know that for sure, but there are hardly any panhandlers. I know there is subsidized housing available, but I hear the wait list is long. Whatever they're doing, there's hardly any homeless on the streets.
If I was in Elon's seat, I personally wouldn't mind paying 20 or 30% of my income in taxes. But vesting shares should not qualify as income. What should qualify as income is me selling those shares. In other words, If I am awarded 1B$ in shares that I have no plan on selling short term, I still have to liquidate 20-30% of those shares just to pay taxes, which may have a pretty high negative impact in term of voting rights.
Why could the taxation not occur when I am selling instead?
I believe that the logic here is the same reason AMT was introduced in the past.
I vest $1M in shares. I get a loan against those shares for 500k. I now have 500k in cash, that I have paid no taxes on. Someone will definitely give me that loan because _worst case_ I have to sell the underlying shares, pay tax, and still pay back the loan. When that loan is due? Refinance against the same shares that I still haven't sold.
If you have a lot of assets, you can always get a loan against those assets. You can kick the can down the road long enough to, effectively, never pay taxes. Or you just kick it long enough for some sort of "tax holiday".
Real estate lets you do this with refinances and 1031 exchanges all the way until you die (at which point the cost basis resets, and your heirs will most likely pay no tax).
That's probably owing to the fact that California's economy is just that large. We're the 5th largest economy in the world.. there's bound to be a higher number of billionaires here.
> The grievance rhetoric has gone too far
I live here, and I disagree. The civil situation in California has done nothing but slowly get worse for the past 3 years, and it has obviously started accelerating in the last 9 months.
> the premise that taxes on wealthy people are nearly criminal theft
That may be the argument.. it may be that for our high taxes in CA, we've been seeing less of it's impact in this state recently. I also have even been wondering if it's still "worth it" to live in CA over the past few months.
> AFAIK, taxes on wealthy people are at historic lows.
Federal personal and business income taxes are. State taxes are not. California in particular is not. Sales taxes are the highest in the nation, and personal income taxes are as well. The state spent the last 8 years going from running a few million in deficit to having several billion in surplus.
Unfortunately, due to corona, that surplus is entirely wiped out and now we're facing several billion in deficit again.
There's not a lot of optimism in CA right now.
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2020/09/08/golden-...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...
The grievance rhetoric has gone too far (and had awhile ago) when it's used by billionaires.
There is also strong reactionary political rhetoric here, the premise that taxes on wealthy people are nearly criminal theft, and nobody would want to live someplace where they democratically invest in their community (i.e., pay taxes). There's also the economic assumption that taxes, whatever their current level, are always too high; AFAIK, taxes on wealthy people are at historic lows.