CNBC reported, “Palantir moving its headquarters from Denver to Miami.”
The story said:
Florida, which offers a friendlier tax environment, has welcomed a wave of billionaires in recent years. The region is also gaining more executives as California deliberates over a 5% wealth tax on residents with a net worth exceeding $1 billion.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly bought a mansion in Florida and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has established a base in Miami.
Palantir, which was founded in Palo Alto, California, in 2003, previously moved to Denver in 2020. CEO Alex Karp has previously spoken out about the culture in Silicon Valley.
“Our company was founded in Silicon Valley,” he wrote in a letter in 2020. “But we seem to share fewer and fewer of the technology sector’s values and commitments.”
Other escapees from the Silicon Valley include Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the company that founded the valley in 1936 before there were silicon chips. Tesla, Oracle, Charles Schwab, Realtor.com, John Paul Mitchell System and SpaceX also self-deported to Texas.
Chevron, founded in 1879 in San Francisco as the Pacific Coast Oil Company, is loading up and moving to Houston.
That is $4.5 trillion in wealth—as measured by market caps—that California shed in recent years.
Conservatives mainly brush this off as an unintended consequence. The Heritage Foundation said:
California is already home to some of the highest taxes in the country, and another tax increase may be on the ballot this year: the “billionaire tax.”
This naked money grab is a one-time, 5% tax on anyone’s wealth over $1 billion—and people are literally leaving over it.
California is already losing about one taxpayer per minute, and this lunatic proposal is gasoline on the fire.
Because it would be retroactive to January 1 of this year, the billionaire flight began in earnest before the new year, as wealthy Californians fled the state for less onerous jurisdictions.
According to Chamath Palihapitiya, cohost of the “All-In” podcast and venture capitalist, so many billionaires preemptively fled California in December that they took a whopping $1 trillion of assets with them, drastically shrinking the tax base and reducing future revenues in the not-so-Golden State.
Among the economic refugees is Google cofounder Larry Page who summarily left the state and took whatever assets he could with him to avoid the onerous proposed tax.
California’s fight over taxes and regulation is colliding with a broader economic shift, as wealthy residents and entrepreneurs take their money elsewhere—delivering a windfall of capital, jobs and taxpayers to red-state competitors.
That shift is already visible in migration patterns across the country.
From 2021 to 2024, Texas and Florida posted the largest net population gains, while California and several northeastern states recorded some of the steepest losses, according to IRS and U.S. Census Bureau data.
The remaining Californians will vote in November on a proposal to confiscate 5% of the wealth of billionaires.
She quoted Steve Moore, co-founder of Unleash Prosperity, who said, “California’s tax base took a massive hit at the end of last year. Silicon Valley billionaires left the state, taking their wealth and future wealth with them.
“These business tycoons are running to states like Florida and Texas because of lower taxes, economic freedom and future economic prosperity. It is common sense for business leaders to pick places for future financial success rather than economic suffocation.”
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Billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted on December, “California is on a path to self-destruction. Hollywood is already toast and now the most productive entrepreneurs will leave taking their tax revenues and job creation elsewhere.
“And then the Democrats highlight Governor Newsom as a great leader. Crazy.”
Robby Starbuck tweeted, “It’s absolutely insane. It’s like watching an arsonist burn down houses and then hiring the arsonist to build you more homes. Just totally nuts.”
All that may be true but taxing and regulating businesses to leave is logical because it is part of a plan to turn the state that was the pinnacle of beauty and capitalism into Havana West.
Communists think long-term. Everything begins slowly and incrementally and then speeds up until it goes into hyperdrive and destroys society.
California’s journey began with an oil spill, which led to a ban on offshore drilling—cutting off a source of wealth. Then came legalized abortion which killed procreation and helped reduce the nation’s birthrate.
In 50 years, California’s non-Hispanic white population went from being 76% of the overall population in 1970 to less than half that (35%) in 2020.
The Hispanic share rose from 13% in 1970 to 39% in 2020 as the Hispanic population more than quintupled. The replacement theory is real and has been since Ted Kennedy led the charge to reform immigration law in 1965.
The public fought back by passing a state constitution ban on using state funds to support illegal aliens. A federal district overturned the ban and none of the governors then or since—Republican and Democrat alike—appealed the decision to a higher court.
California’s generous homeless program attracted 187,084 homeless people to the state by 2024 (which is the latest verified data).
State residents effectively legalized store theft as long as it was under $950 per visit.
The animosity toward the middle class was shown in last year’s forest fires in L.A. First the city appointed DEI fire chiefs. Next the city drained the reservoirs. Finally, as fire season began, the mayor fled to Ghana for a friendship tour in the country that exported millions of slaves to the Americas.
The result was 200,000 middle class people losing their homes and businesses. The fire destroyed at least 18,000 building.
A year later, 28 new homes were built.
No, the confiscatory tax policy up for a vote in November does not have the unintended consequences of trillions of dollars in wealth to other states. That is the intention because it is easier for despots to rule over the poor than govern the middle class.
Pray for Florida and Texas because we already have seen what the exodus of Californians have done to Colorado, Oregon and Washington state.
This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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