One of Palo Alto’s billionaires, Google co-founder Larry Page, is talking about leaving California over a ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% fee on assets of people worth more than $1 billion, according to the New York Times.
The news comes at a time when Palo Alto’s billionaires are under fire from residents and the City Council. Two council members, Greer Stone and Keith Rechdahl, have proposed regulations to stop homeowners from assembling groups of neighboring homes to form a compound, as Zuckerberg has done. Neighbors have complained about construction noise, unmarked security vehicles and a loss of parking.
Billionaires have done this previously in Palo Alto, such as when Google co-founder Larry Page bought up the properties of his neighbors on Bryant Street in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood. Page was criticized by his neighbors for letting ground water from his properties flow into the gutters and storm sewers.
The Times said that three limited liability companies associated with Page filed earlier in December to incorporate in Florida.
Tech VC Peter Thiel is also said to be thinking about leaving, according to the Times report. Thiel is considering reducing his ties to the state, and has explored opening an office for his personal investment firm, Thiel Capital, in another state, the Times said.
Palmer Luckey, cofounder of defense tech startup Anduril and a Newport Beach resident, has said that such a tax on billionaires would force “founders like me to sell huge chunks of our companies to pay for fraud, waste, and political favors for the organizations pushing this ballot initiative.”
The ballot proposal is backed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. The 5% percent tax would apply to stocks, real estate, artwork, and even intellectual property rights. The union is in the process of collecting the necessary 875,000 voter signatures to put the measure on the ballot.
Greer Stone is hitting himself on the head and saying Why didn’t I think of that!
Roughly, in terms of dollars, Page’s wealth would decrease from about $230 billion dollars to $220 billion dollars. What one might call, rounding error. Last year the value of Alphabet increased by about 60%.
Just useful to remember all these numbers. People feel differently about this, but knowing the real numbers seems to me helpful.
Regardless of the size of his assets, they’re his not yours. Keep in mind it’s billionaires today.Your assets tomorrow.
They’re only “his” by exploitation. He didn’t work a billion-dollars-harder than everyone else.
Actually, it is my assets today, not tomorrow. My City, State & Fed taxes are an extraordinary percentage more of my assets than his.
Why is his wealth & income taxed at such an incredibly low percentage? Why doesn’t his tax percentage on all of his income equal my total percentage? I’m not speaking of socialism, I’m speaking to simple fairness.
Greer Stone spends tens of millions of dollars on studies to figure out how to build an underpass while doing everything he can to prevent Palo Alto from meeting it’s state mandated (RHNA) housing goals.
Greer got on the council in 2021. Palo Alto was supposed to build 760 housing units in 2023. They only permited 224. So did they meet their goal of 760 units in 2024? Nope! They only issued permits 182 units. Then missed big in 2025. What’s the solution? Blame a few (5?) billionaires who have purchased homes for their families.
Compare Palo Alto to Mountain View, which permits 1500 new units a year by strategically repurposing industrial land. Greer won’t allow that. He wants to be creative. Greer proposed a “three year wait” between development projects to deminish how people can improve sites that can include housing. He also wants to judge resident’s travel schedules and tax them for vacancies, and use that money to support hand picked solutions low income residents. California has a housing problem. Greer’s proposals amount to doubling down on policies that have failed across the US and Canada, while searching for scape goats.
That’s not Greer Stone but the City Manager’s office that spends $27,000,000 yearly on consultants who’ve never even visited Palo Alto and who think Stanford Shopping Center is downtown and we therefore don’t need more retail. (Just ignore all those empty stores!)
Then when City Council VERY belatedly objects, the City Manager proposes ANOTHER study to improve how PA works with consultants.
NEWS FLASH: TELL YOUR STAFF TO START CHECKING THE CONSULTANTS’ work. Just a thought for all the overpaid useless bureaucrats.
But no problem since the city can keep OVERCHARGING us another $24,000.000 for utilities a year.
What does City spending on consultants have to do with a State ballot initiative?
The proposed California wealth tax—a one-time 5% levy on fortunes exceeding $1 billion—is nothing short of a humanitarian crisis for our most delicate demographic: the centibillionaire. Let’s examine their unimaginable plight with the somber, data-driven sympathy it deserves.
1. The Math of Their Martyrdom
Take the poignant case of Larry Page, with an estimated net worth of **$230 billion**. After this confiscatory 5% tax on wealth *over* $1 billion, his life-altering sacrifice would be roughly $11.45 billion. One commenter astutely called this a “rounding error,” and they’re factually correct. For perspective:
· This sum is less than the year-to-year swing in the value of his Alphabet stock, which increased by about 60% ($138 billion) in a single year prior.
· Post-tax, Mr. Page would be left with approximately $218.55 billion, a sum so paltry he might have to wait an extra nanosecond to become the world’s richest person again. Our thoughts and prayers.
2. The Liquidity Nightmare (AKA, “The Tragedy of Having Only Illiquid Assets”)
Detractors will weep, “But their wealth is in stock! They’d have to sell!” This is the core of the suffering.
· To pay this one-time tax, Mr. Page might need to liquidate a sliver of his holdings. This “fire sale” would constitute about 0.7% of his total Alphabet shares (based on a simplified calculation), a divestment so drastic it’s practically corporate abandonment.
· The sheer bureaucratic horror of coordinating with financial advisors to sell a fraction of one’s assets—a process managed daily by middle-class families saving for retirement—is clearly an undue burden for the founders of the world’s most sophisticated financial and technological empires.
3. What Are They Fleeing, Exactly?
The tax proposal earmarks 90% of revenue for healthcare, potentially funding services for… other Californians. The injustice is clear: why should their capital contribute to the society that provided the educated workforce, infrastructure, legal system, and stable economy that enabled its creation? The principled stand is obvious: incorporate in Florida, a state renowned for its robust social safety net and egalitarian ethos.
In conclusion, we must ask: is any public good—be it healthcare, housing, or education—worth the psychic trauma of reducing a fortune from “obscenely unimaginable” to merely “unfathomably vast”? The exodus of these fragile job-creators is a small price to pay for preserving their right to never encounter a rounding error that doesn’t round exclusively in their favor.
Final Factual Note: The non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office warns this tax could cause an ongoing loss of hundreds of millions in annual income tax revenue if they leave. The ultimate suffering, it seems, may be ironically self-inflicted by the state seeking to tax them. A true Greek tragedy for the modern age.
Let’s tax you more and see how you like it.
It’s not all about them having to pay the rounding error, it also comes down to what is their wealth transfer being used for?
Much of that 5% will be pure waste. One of the few things government entities are good at.
The longer term question for California is what is the end game? Some of the highest taxation of gasoline in the nation. Some of the highest state income taxation in the nation. A litany of other means of taxation. Too many to list. Now the billionaires tax. After that, then what? Then after that, then what? Eventually the politicians will run out of the means to claw additional taxes from its citizens, not just billionaires, then what happens?
The longer term outcome is inevitable and obvious. Eventually they run out of the means to tax more and are left with addressing the real problems. Problems they refuse to acknowledge.
The weather is beautiful, the scenery is beautiful, but taxes don’t provide those. You’re not paying taxes for those things, those things have been provided for free for centuries.
Eventually when there is no more to take from others it collapses. When? Who knows, but California residents will eventually face their day of reckoning. As you note, the billionaires will be just fine. It’s the working middle class who will ultimately carry the burden of a failed local government.
Peter, get your facts right. You misstated the Legislative Analyst’s Offices report. Under “Summary of Major Fiscal Effects” it says the impact of this tax will be in the billions, not millions.” It says, “These wealth tax revenues probably would add up to tens of billions of dollars spread over several years.”
Congratulations Peter Walker. Your comment is longer than the article you’re commenting on. Let me boil down your comment into a few words: “I want Larry Page’s wealth put in my bank account so that I can spend it on myself.”
If you support contributing 5% of one’s wealth to the Government, why don’t you write a check to the State of California right now, and set an example for everyone else?
It’s amazing how many people are frothing at the mouth to spend someone else’s money but while jealously guarding own. While you in your infinite wisdom(?) may have decided that billionaires can afford to have 5% of their wealth confiscated, there are no doubt people with less wealth than you who believe you can easily part with 5% of your wealth.
That’s abit harsh. They became billionaires because of their wits on their own. Quite sure they contribute to they city by being there n also any other little asking the City Council members expect them to pay. Restaurants, stores boutiques etc etc will suffer you start fickle n dine these people. All the money they want to collect from the billionaires, where n who will be handling it!?!?!
These people will leave as a matter of principal. They have resources and do not have 9 to 6 jobs.
Principle?
Good riddance
Amen to that
I think Google should pack up the entire company Google and leave for another state where the taxes are a little more friendlier
That’s what Tesla and Palintr did, and Google probably will too. That will leave the godless 60 year olds in their $3m eichlers, doing nothing for the homeless, and blocking all forms of change.
We’re blaming the rich for bad political management of our money. I’m not rich. But it makes me sick to see us trying to catalyze those who have become successful.
Cannibalize is what I was trying to say in the previous comment about our government trying to destroy businesses for their success because they can’t manage our money
Who cares. Take take take and complain about giving their fair share
Could you tell me what their “fair share” is? Please give me a figure. I always hear politicians say the rich should pay their fair share, but they never say how much that is. The top 1% pay half of the state’s income taxes. Is that enough?
We could go back to 90% tax rate. That sounds reasonable to me. It’s what enabled the US to have so much “greatness” for a time. Then it seems an entire generation got amnesia about it and reversed all of the good things that served us. Nevermind the fact that zero billionaires should never exist.
Victor, you don’t know anything about this. Yeah, the tax rate was 90% at one time, but that caused accountants to create tax shelters. The result was a lower actual rate than what people pay today. That’s why the 90% rate was scrapped — nobody paid it!
The top 1% pay half of California’s income tax. If the billionaires leave, where does the government get money for the train to nowhere, sex change surgeries for inmates or no-show union jobs?
One more money grab by the government. Make it 10 or 15 percent. Drive every business that employs hundreds or thousands of people out of the state. Then open the state to every drug dealer, gangbanger and pedophile that crosses the border. They didn’t become billionaires by being stupid. This is Palo Alto copying the CA model.
Good riddance.. typical greedy tech mutha fggas.. making their fortunes in my home town, chasing out decent folks and then financially backing political interest candidates like Orange Mango who want to throw “illegals” (American citizens) in concentration camps, and lobby to kill health care for millions.. Enough is enough I say! It’s never enough for these Dr. Evil types.
These B-aires are so damn greedy. It’s a mental illness. Why don’t they want to help society by allowing tax to fund social measures? Society provided the opportunity to earn the money in the first place. Let them leave. Good riddance.
Passed time to leave California. Born and raised 70 years now. My worst mistake was not getting out in the 80’s.
Gone forever and will never come back now. Government Workers, the Homeless, and Illegal immigrants is all that will be left.
There is so much fraud and waste in CA. Politicians tax people like crazy for different “projects” that never happen. Democrats have controlled the state for too long. They are destroying it.
The Palo Altoans who benefit from Greer Stone are the ones who own property and don’t work. They have gotten so lazy while getting rich, that they started to get irritated by any form of change. Now they are going after people who create jobs. It will backfire on them. When the jobs leave, the people who work will leave. New people will not come in to pay 10X what homes are worth. School populations will plummet. The rest of the country is confused about how Palo Alto exists as it does today. They will not be confused about why it declines.
Tax the rich. These billionaires are so extremely out of touch with reality. The middle class is unable to afford to buy simple homes anymore because tech billionaires and corrupt politicians that give them tax breaks have driven up housing market for everyone. The billionaires can pay more taxes or leave. Good riddance.
Greed, call it what it is. These people are billionaires. Think about that! When the majority of us can’t even imagine having that amount of wealth. It would be nice to see these men donate some of it to the people/organizations who really need it!
California keeps shooting itself in the foot. They need to learn how to live on what they have instead of taxing people and businesses so much that they leave the state. We need leadership that understands that principle in this state.
The problem is wealth inequality. The amount of money the boss has/ makes, compared to their workers who service then and live in the same general area. These people are cleaning their homes and offices. They care for their children. They allow for make their money to make money. Living wages, roads, hospitals airports and school. Police, fire, nurses, teachers too. Living wages in areas where costs have skyrocketed due to the billionaires. Their workers are having to work more than one job while paying a disproportionate percentage of their wages in taxes. The tax laws need to be changed so that the workin middle class isn’t paying greater percentages of their income. The corporates have loopholes to decrease their tax burdens that the rest of us don’t have
buy bye. You can’t leave too soon.
Let’s keep this in perspective. 5% is a is a bad day in the stock market – something that happens to these guys on a regular basis. If they want to leave because of that, fine: as with similar threats in NYC over Mamdani becoming mayor, it’s not happening in general because it really does’t make any sense. Even if followed through, it’s not clear to me that the impact is a net negative. Have you noticed big changes since Elon moved to Texas in 2021 along with Tesla HQ? A much smaller fraction of their wealth goes into the local economy than people with more modest incomes: a well-known and not surprising fact, since those with more modest earnings are spending more on their day-to-day lives than their investments.
As for the ghoulish Thiel… getting him to leave seems like a feature, not a bug.
We don’t know how many people will leave NYC because of Mamdani because he was just sworn in. We do know that working-class New Yorkers have been leaving NYC at higher rates than the wealthy, a trend that has existed since the pandemic, according to NYS Focus, a left-leaning website.
In California, since 2020, 500,000 people have left for other states, according to the Public Policy Institute. People with college degrees are leaving. They’re being replaced by immigrants who haven’t even attended high school. People who stick around in California will get hit with increasingly high tax bills to make up for the high-earners who have left the state.
Just curious, Mr. Tin Man, did you vote for the Measure A sales tax increase in Santa Clara County this fall?
Another fact-free trumper rant…based on nothing more than memes and fear mongering aka the the normal trumper information source.
The well-documented NYC housing data shows you are merely spraying nonsense…which is apparent to anyone who has read one of your ignorant, pandering screeds.
You complain that Drained Taxpayer’s comments are “based on nothing more than memes and fear mongering.” I see two attributions to actual sources of solid information. You ought to make a factual argument for higher taxes, not scream “Trump” and provide no facts at all to defend your position.
TDS is alive and … not so well
California had an estimated $20 billion fraudulent claims to EDD for jobless benefits, is spending $2 billion per year on the train to nowhere (High speed Rail), Governor Newsom added undocumented immigrants to the Medi-Cal program at a cost of $8.5 billion, experts estimate another $3 – $5 billion in fraud in the Medi-Cal program. This alone adds up $35 billion, which would much more than this wealth tax.
Government theft
We are all targets eventually
When the billionaires leave, the state’s debt will only get bigger. The socialists at SEIU-UHW didn’t think that through. The very people they say they’re trying to help are going to get stuck with the bill.
In reply to Peter Walker.
Congratulations Peter Walker. Your comment is longer than the article you’re commenting on. Let me boil down your comment into a few words: “I want Larry Page’s wealth put in my bank account so that I can spend it on myself.” And that makes sense. You weren’t successful in life, so you want to use the government to take what you think is yours and give it to other people who were less successful.
Good. Palo Alto and California will be a lot better off without these plutocratic, monopolistic, trumpist criminals.
Five percent for these creeps is lunch money. Greedy swine. Everything that is wrong with America can be laid at their doorsteps.
And fie upon all of the trumpist tech bro bootlickers here. Useful idiots all.