San Francisco. Jan. 19, 2026. by Dr. Roger Roots.

California has some of the nation’s highest taxes and harshest regulations. But now, as California voters prepare to vote on a ballot initiative to impose a “one time” wealth tax of “five percent on the assets of California residents worth more than a billion,” several of California’s richest residents are preparing to flee the Golden State.

Writing for the Washington Post, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Caroline O’Donovan report that some of the world’s richest men, including tech investor David Sacks, Peter Thiel, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are all in preparations to relocate to either Florida or Texas.

The wealth tax proposal, report Dwoskin and O’Donovan, is “intended to offset federal budget cuts to social services.” (Note that there have been no federal budget cuts whatsoever.)

Creating yet another secret police unit.

The provision’s co-author, University of Missouri law professor, David Gamage, says the intention of the law is to tax roughly 200 identified billionaires in the state. The “one time tax” will create yet another secret police unit which will scour through assets of wealthy Californians to identify seizable properties. Gilbert Hyatt, an inventor who patented chip technology moved to Nevada from Silicone Valley in the early 1990s. The state of California so savagely investigated Hyatt’s move that it sent tax inspectors to his house to dig through his trash and peer through his windows.

“Andy Fang, the co-founder of the food delivery company DoorDash, which is public, posted that the provision “could wipe me out,” and that it would be “irresponsible for me not to plan [on] leaving the state.”