The ballot proposition was constructed in such a way as it can technically not solve any of the stated problems it was ostensibly written to address — chief among them, filling a massive budget hole in Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program) following California legislation that guaranteed permanent funding for illegal immigrant healthcare. That promise was never tenable, but following federal Medicaid cuts it has dragged California into crisis. The futility of the ballot proposition has left most men impacted with a sense that the ballot proposition’s true purpose is to humiliate them, disrupt their personal lives, and hurt their companies. Given especially the proposition’s dangerous language surrounding control, which I detailed extensively last week, founders of private companies in particular, with their armies of lawyers investigating this thing, believe the proposition, as written, could actually bankrupt them. Obviously, there is now real danger in appearing successful in the state of California, as the far left, imbued with a great deal of power, and benefiting now from several years of wealth scapegoating throughout the mainstream press, attempts to liquidate its perceived enemies in business.
But first, are these guys staying and fighting, or are they leaving? And how many have already left? While there’s been a great deal of reporting on the matter, nobody seems to agree on the number.
Three men I spoke with in the largest billionaire Signal chat said they ran an informal poll, and seventy percent of the chat (around sixty people, not all of whom were billionaires) indicated they would leave the state if the ballot proposition passes. According to that same poll, around 15% have already left the state.
I’ve spoken with around ten percent of billionaires in the state myself. Of the 21 men I interviewed, 20 would have been impacted by the ballot measure. All 20 of them, including the Democrats, as well as several of the most committed diehard proponents of revitalizing San Francisco, are now developing an exit plan. (Three have already left.) Almost all of them have either purchased property out of state or are in the process of buying property out of state now; almost all of them have engaged lawyers to help them navigate what they see as a potentially years-long legal battle; and, among the men I spoke with who are presently running companies, almost all have deployed business ops leaders to focus on opening offices out of California.
While, without exception, every founder of a private company I interviewed mentioned the ballot proposition’s confusing and confounding “control” language, their focus is generally directed to the overall uncertainty surrounding legislation in the state. Concern has much less to do with this single ballot proposition than the question of how companies will be targeted in the future, and everyone believes they will be targeted again. There is also nobody who believes the introduction of architecture for a legalized asset seizure, something we’ve never before seen in this country, will conclude with an exclusive targeting of billionaires over the years to come. Once the concept is normalized, everyone assumes wealth taxes of this kind will ultimately target every “wealthy” person in the state, with the term “wealthy” redefined in whatever manner leftists find useful from election cycle to election cycle.