From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes

Daniel McCarthy
Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:31:58 -0800
Opinion

California Democrats should listen to The Rolling Stones.

The band famously fled England in the 1970s, heading into tax exile in the south of France.

Mick Jagger and his mates weren't alone — a generation of rock royalty abandoned the U.K. because of its steep taxes: David Bowie opted for Switzerland; Rod Stewart went to California.
Updated: Mon Jan 19, 2026

California Democrats should listen to The Rolling Stones.

The band famously fled England in the 1970s, heading into tax exile in the south of France.

Mick Jagger and his mates weren't alone — a generation of rock royalty abandoned the U.K. because of its steep taxes: David Bowie opted for Switzerland; Rod Stewart went to California.

"We left England because we'd be paying 98 cents on the dollar. We left, and they lost out. No taxes at all," Stones guitarist Keith Richards recalled to Fortune.

Progressives are now transforming California into what Britain was before Margaret Thatcher — and it's not celebrities who are leaving, but the billionaires who drive Silicon Valley's economy, and therefore the state's.

The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act ballot measure is a recipe for reverse alchemy, turning the Golden State into lead.

California's descending into a vicious spiral all too familiar from other blue states and cities, whenever they try to make up for revenue lost as billionaires and businesses flee by raising taxes ever higher.

But this is no ordinary tax on incremental gains — the Billionaire Tax is straight-up confiscation, a one-time seizure of 5% of a taxpayer's assets.

The law would hit anyone with $1 billion or more, which is admittedly a tiny population — fewer than 300 people — even in California.

But if millions of people voting in a referendum can expropriate a few hundred people this time, what's to stop them from doing it to a few thousand the next, or many thousands after that?

What begins with the billionaires won't end with them.

Even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who's no stranger to scaring money away from the state — just ask Elon Musk — thinks the Billionaire Tax goes too far.

Or does he?

He tells The New York Times he fears it would harm California's competitiveness with other states, but a national confiscation wouldn't be so bad:

"It's one thing to have a prism of the nation, and you can talk about 50 states," he says. "It's another when you're competing against 49 other states."

A prism of the nation?

It sounds like Newsom meant "a prison of the nation" — where the prey can't escape by just moving to Texas.

Newsom has made his state a sanctuary for illegal immigrants while his policies encourage the nation's most successful businesspeople to self-deport.

The low-tax red states of Texas and Florida are booming thanks to exactly the opposite approach — they're sanctuaries for entrepreneurs who create new jobs and whole industries.

The tech-talent exodus had begun long before the Billionaire Tax arose on California's horizon.

But it's hastening the rush out, and whether or not it passes, the initiative confirms Silicon Valley's worst fears about where things are headed.

So the billionaires are headed someplace else:

Elon Musk left for Texas in 2020 and subsequently relocated Tesla, SpaceX and other companies he owns.

Peter Thiel is now a Florida resident and has shifted his operations out of California by stages.

David Sacks has gone to Austin, and Google's founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are said to be cutting their ties to California, too.

Even the billionaire owner of California's iconic In-N-Out burger chain announced last July she was leaving for Tennessee.

A June 2025 report by the Public Policy Institute of California notes the state lost 1.9% of its corporate headquarters between 2011 and 2021.

The Los Angeles Times says California suffered a net emigration of 741 firms in 2022 and 531 in 2023 as well.

Along with New York, California is the Democratic Party's crown jewel at the state level.

Yet both states are bleeding business because of high taxes and stifling regulations.

"California and New York have, by far, the highest domestic outflow of domestic companies across the US" dating back to 2015, according to the Financial Times.

These states, like other blue states and cities before them, are wrecking the very prosperity that makes their extensive social services and government benefits possible.

And as in Illinois and so many other places, short-sighted unions are exacerbating California's problems.

The Billionaire Tax is being pushed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which wants to make up for Trump administration cuts to federal services by sapping the wealthiest Californians.

If that strikes fear into Newsom, so much the better — the union can use that fear to wring more concessions from him, his party and the state they control.

Meanwhile, the men and women whose abilities and resources contribute the most to making California a place that would rank as the world's fifth biggest economy if it were a country of its own aren't waiting around to find out who'll carve them for dinner.

They're following the Stones' example and going wherever success isn't punished.