[piva00]

> 1. The tax could cause him to sell equity he doesn't want to. It's not like he has $270B in a checking account.

If there is $270B in equity invested, making those 5% back should be rather straightforward for someone with that much wealth, a decent wealth manager would recoup that easily. Money makes money.

> 2. If they do it once then why not again next year? Maybe next time it's for only $100 million or $10 million or $1 million. Eventually everyone is paying 5% of their wealth every year. Why not? That's how we got the current income tax.

This is just a slippery slope fallacy.

> 3. It's the principle. Resisting these efforts sends a signal that they aren't a good idea.

Exactly, it's blackmailing, sending a message "look what you've made me do" when the government attempts to reign in the ultrawealthy.

> 4. Do we really think the money is better off in control of the incompetent CA government than invested in private enterprise or donated to charity? I don't see how it's better for it to line Newsom's Swiss bank account.

With this argument you can defend never paying taxes to CA then, do you think it would be better as a complete anarco-capitalist state? It makes me sad that USA's public governance is so bad that this argument is always used to defend rich people not paying taxes; the political system is so absolutely broken that people prefer to allow ultrawealthy folks to keep hoarding even in the face of very real issues fracturing society stemming from that instead of thinking about how that money could fix many public issues.

[Jensson]

> If there is $270B in equity invested, making those 5% back should be rather straightforward for someone with that much wealth, a decent wealth manager would recoup that easily. Money makes money.

Its his voter shares, he wont get them back. Larry and Sergei currently control 51% of Google votes, if they sell any more they lose control of Google so they can't afford to sell.

[piva00]

I highly doubt that Larry Page has $270B only invested in one egg (Google), even if a large part of his wealth comes from that.

[iamnothere]

> Exactly, it's blackmailing, sending a message "look what you've made me do" when the government attempts to reign in the ultrawealthy.

If it’s blackmailing, it’s blackmailing that is legal and extremely common. Similar events have occurred in multiple jurisdictions around the world whenever wealth taxes are attempted. The only way to prevent this in a country like the US that doesn’t allow retroactive taxation is to institute an exit tax, but this is also not legal at the state level in the US. Oh, and you also likely need capital controls, another no-no inside the US.

Capital flight is so historically common that there’s a common phrase to describe it. I have no idea why CA thought they were any different.