Posted on 03/19/2026 10:51:35 AM PDT by Angelino97
Ayn Rand was a Russian-born writer who immigrated to the United States in 1926, worked as a screenwriter and playwright and wrote several novels expressing an individualistic philosophy she called “objectivism.”
Rand’s novels and outspoken ideology were subjects of academic and media debate from the onset of her literary career, but controversy soared with the 1957 publication of her 1,168-page “Atlas Shrugged.” The novel describes a revolt by business executives, inventors, artists and other accomplished Americans who opposed suffocating taxes and regulations.
Rand likens the rebels to Atlas, a figure of Greek mythology who holds the world on his shoulders. But in Rand’s book, the characters shrug off their burden and retreat to a remote and invisible valley in Colorado dubbed Galt’s Gulch, named for the rebellion leader, John Galt.
This bit of literary history is offered because we’re seeing a flight of wealthy entrepreneurs from California and other blue states, due to regulations and taxes aimed specifically at them.
The most obvious example is the relocation of a handful of California’s 200 or so billionaires to such states as Florida, Nevada and Texas in response to a health care union’s proposed 5% tax on their wealth via a ballot measure in November. The proposal, if passed, would generate an estimated $100 billion over four years, mostly to support health care services.
“This extraordinary wealth migration is reshaping south Florida: spurring development, tripling real estate prices for trophy properties (even as single-family home prices in the state have stagnated here) and amplifying demand for nannies, private chefs, exclusive golf club memberships and private schools,” the Los Angeles Times reported recently.
“They’re trying to kill and eat the golden goose of technology startups in California,” said Garry Tan, CEO of the startup incubator Y Combinator, in a posting on X describing wealth tax advocates.
A bigger concern, at least in the Capitol, is that if billionaires flee, California’s budget would take a big hit on income tax revenues. The top 1% of California taxpayers now supplies nearly half of all income tax collections. Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes the wealth tax, calling it “really damaging to the state,” saying it will “drive away affluent residents,” and promising to work to defeat it.
As Silicon Valley’s tech tycoons weigh whether to leave California, they are also pledging tens of millions of dollars to oppose the proposed measure and to qualify other measures that would hamstring its effects were it to pass.
“Of course they’re going to oppose this,” Jack Citrin, emeritus professor of political science at UC Berkeley, told the San Jose Mercury News. “They want to control what they do. They want to live a particular lifestyle. They want to give money to their heirs.”
The exodus of billionaires isn’t confined to California.
New York City’s newly elected socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, wants that state’s Legislature to enact a spate of new taxes, but Gov. Kathy Hochul is opposed, worrying it could accelerate a leakage of wealthy New Yorkers.
“I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we have in our state,” she said at a Politico forum last week.
Meanwhile Washington, one of the few U.S. states that don’t have an income tax, is on the verge of enacting one.
Last week, its Legislature gave final approval to a 9.9% tax on incomes of $1 million or more, and Gov. Bob Ferguson says he will sign it. As the tax loomed, Howard Schultz, founder of the Starbucks coffee shop chain, announced he’s relocating to Florida. Starbucks’ headquarters is moving to Tennessee.
It may not be the massive exodus that Rand depicts in Atlas Shrugged, but what’s happening certainly mirrors the novel’s underlying tensions.
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This isn’t mirroring Atlas Shrugged.
These are left wing billionaires, and they offer re-location packages to their left wing employees so that they can turn our beautiful red states into an ugly shade of blue.
*spit*
Tell these creeps to stay in their hell holes. Why is it that the left wing billionaires always get to do the FA, but they never have to bend over and receive the FO?
Expect to see the worst professional sports teams in the histories of their leagues.
Galt’s Gulch would not have let them in.
The rat governments will need the bread and circuses more than ever. Look for athlete exceptions to the rules.
Interesting. Rational individuals will bolt from some billionaires.
The first time I moved away from the Tarnished State, it took them 3 years to begin hounding me and they made me prove I actually moved by giving them AZ tax returns I filed. These folks will NOT have that luxury, the Franchise Tax Board will be on them on DAY ONE, if they haven’t already contacted them and let them know that they are at the top of the Tax Enforcement List.
Amusing how history repeats. In the latter part of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, the biggest political and financial supporters of the Bolsheviks were the wealthy, urban Russian elites. Once the Bolsheviks came to power not only were they stripped of their wealth but their lives as well. Today those billionaires who are now wisely fleeing California were for the most part supporters of the Left and supported the very politicians who are moving to seize their wealth.
A few factors are all happening at once in Florida, depending on your perspective Florida is poised to have a huge influx of wealthy high-income people move here, over and above those who have already migrated.
This article focuses on the wealth tax in California being on major factor in pushing billionaires to leave California and move to Florida.
New York State and City are on the verge of enacting a couple of tax measures that will only drive the wealthy out of the state.
They are attempting to enact a wealth tax like California, they are also attempting to radically raise estate taxes, lowering the threshold for estates from 7 million down to $750,000 and raising the tax rate from 16% to 50%.
Here in Florida, we don’t have an income tax, wealth tax or estate taxes and we are likely to be voting on a constitutional amendment this November to reduce property taxes substantially.
Combine all those factors and people from California, Illinois and New York are likely headed our way.
Did I skip a page? I don't recall any massive exodus.
Ayn Rand ping.
CA gave me a tax bill several years after I left CA.
I just wrote them a check to be done with them.
Good for them, but for decades they supported the utopian polices, political idiocies, and hostility toward Judeo-Christian values, that led directly to the current lack of respect for property rights and other fundamental America values in that state. Far less wealthy people saw it coming to fruition some day. That day is here. And now these leftards want to carry their values to other states and help repeat the cycle. I have zero sympathy.
Right. What the producers did was…stop producing under the burdensome terms of the consumers. They “shrugged.” (That’s the answer to the question early in the novel, paraphrasing: ‘If you were Atlas and carried the weight of the world on your shoulders, what would you do?’ One of the heroes answers: ‘I’d shrug.’)
No one is discussing it, but America must change its monetary system
America’s ever-advancing woke-marxist governments are funded mostly by income taxes on high earners, and federal transfers
And these come from printed, fiat money keeping markets afloat, and massive Federal debt.
Just look at New York State. Of its 2025 total revenue of $247 billion - 25% comes from personal income taxes and 40% comes from Federal Transfers.
Of that personal income tax - 1% of filers pay nearly 50% of the revenue. The bottom 50% of filers pay 0.2% of the total
And as for Federal Transfers? Fed.gov has $2-$3 trillion in deficits every year - and that’s when the economy is strong.
And therein lies the problem. They want to live a Woke / radical liberal social issues lifestyle and open borders lifestyle but libertarian economic lifestyle. But they are finding that "socially liberal / economically libertarian" is a Siren song of a small minority. The Jacobin mob in California is socially radically liberal Woke and economically Communist.
But it is worse that this simple math problem, because while there has be a net population loss for the state, the reality is that highly productive high income earners have left, some of that population has been replaced by illegal foreigners who are not only not productive, but actually impose a higher burden to the states service's budgets. Things like schools, and medical care and housing (in hotels, no less), and food and legal representation.
If you presented this to a group of middle school students, I have no doubt that they would immediately see the problem (even in the educationally challenged state in which I live). But the jackasses in charge are either oblivious, or are intentionally pulling a Cloward-Piven.
and bringing their insanity to red states
I agree, but it needs to be said --
There are no real life Ayn Rand heroes, but there are Ayn Rand villains all over the place.
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