The ultrawealthy have been exiting SF, LA, NYC, and Chicago for decades now. Not sure how many are left in those cities since every election cycle brings doom and gloom that the wealthy will abandon those states for sure, this time.
Most recently during COVID, when many a VC exited SF and NYC to Florida with loud caterwauling about how the cities were completely over and Miami is where it's all going to be at going forward.
Nearly every single one has quietly crawled their way back into those respective cities. Agglomeration effects baby!
Listen, I am sure there is some level of taxation at which the rich will in fact decamp and go somewhere else, but empirically we are nowhere near it, nor does it appear that any of the mainstream proposals (either for increased high-bracket tax rates or wealth taxes) get anywhere near it.
For example, MA instituted a 4% surtax on all incomes over $1M and... and the population of payers actually increased 25% since instituting it[1].
> and the population of payers actually increased 25% since instituting it
This was obviously going to happen when you have a static number and inflation keeps going up. Inflation between 2022 and 2025 has been huge. Perhaps not 25% huge, but a large part of this "growth of payers" is just due to inflation.
This doesn't remotely begin to compute. Inflation is a measure of prices of goods and services, not of incomes. There is no reason to believe that high inflation results in higher nominal incomes.
Heck the opposite is true - it's why high inflation is so despised, specifically because prices outrun income growth.
What does it even mean that an ultrawealthy person would "leave" a city? One not unreasonable interpretation is that they would no longer have standing to promote their own interests there at the expense of the rest of the population. As a non-billionaire myself this sounds like a pretty good idea to me; what's good for billionaires is often not so good for everybody else.
