> when your richest citizens are leaving

But the article says "a majority" of those leaving were middle- or low-income people.

A "majority" of any sizeable group is not going to be rich. What is important for fiscal impact is that the rich are leaving, not that other people are also leaving.

If you want to see data, we can look at IRS data:

"New York’s tax base shrank by $19.5 billion while California lost $17.8 billion as a result of workers fleeing those states during a time when lockdown measures allowed employees to work remotely, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Other high-tax jurisdictions such as Illinois ($8.5 billion); Massachusetts ($2.6 billion); New Jersey ($2.3 billion); and Maryland ($1.9 billion) also saw an exodus of workers during 2020.

The states that reaped the benefits of the “wealth migration” include Florida, which gained an additional $23.7 billion in gross income; Texas, which gained $6.3 billion; Arizona, which took in $4.8 billion more; North Carolina ($3.8 billion); South Carolina ($3.6 billion); and Tennessee ($2.6 billion)."[1]

[1] https://nypost.com/2022/06/06/ny-cali-biggest-losers-as-weal...

Not that California is better, but all those places are stupid places to move to for global warming reasons. At least in the long term.

TX, NC, SC, and TN are bad states for global warming? Please explain.

This report goes into detail why. https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report

Essentially the south and south west have the worst impacts, with PNW least in the lower 48.

That's entirely consistent with 100 billionaires moving out.

Your last paragraph is self-contradictory.

Ending Prop 13 would not cause "significantly scaling back spending and decreasing its vast administrative bureaucracies." Instead it would have the opposite effect. All other taxes would stay the same, but now they'd have this additional source of money.

This may be difficult to understand, and I can accept if you refuse to believe it, but it's possible to say that two steps are needed without the first step also accomplishing the second.

"e.g. 1) switch to more funding on property taxes and 2) reduce administrative bloat"

Shockingly, this does not make the two steps "self-contradictory".

Despite your condescending tone: my comment was what WOULD happen. Yours is what you'd like.

I mean, how do you communicate with someone that has no ability to make quantitative estimates? Yes, getting rid of prop 13 would require the administrative complexity of one specific job of one department to increase. No, this does not contradict the goal of reducing administrative waste. Fire a million bureaucrats (15% of the population of California works for state and local government), shut down 20 departments, and the 1000 people you need to hire for prop 13 rollback will not reduce the overall goal.

And by shifting responsibilities, you could easily do this without hiring anyone else - almost all states have a value-based property tax system, and this includes states with extremely lean administrative load compared to California, so your claim that following their model is some self-contradictory nut to crack is specious.

> someone that has no ability to make quantitative estimates

wow, thanks! Way to patronize.

We don't need "quantitative estimates" -- we just need a qualitative estimate of the propensities of politicians. Especially in California.