This thread showcases exactly why they do this: It is enough to simply slap the name "philanthropy" on something in order to have people thinking it is good and defending you. It is an effective PR stunt, which is why they all do it. Don't be the fool.
Do people often pretend that they're going to move? Seems like a weird thing to say.
But if you are unfathomably rich, it's missing a lot of the culture/arts/schools/dining/tier 1 medical care/things to do of a big blue city like NYC/Bay Area/whatever. It's also culturally a place who already made their money elsewhere go to flaunt it. It's a very different vibe than places people work and grow wealth.
So a lot of the uber rich already have 5 homes, one of which is Florida, and they spend exactly enough days there, creating exactly enough of a paper trail to show Florida is their primary residence.
In practice it may just be adjustments around the edges to where they already spend time. Most only do this if they are childless, the kids are out of the house, or they are extremely divorced.. since it's disruptive to kids being in school.
My guess is you haven’t spent much time in Miami or Florida. It’s most definitely not just theme parks and beaches.
- they move their official residence and happen to stay most of the time at the "totally just rented" place in the same state anyway
- or keep telling everyone how they're going to move, but don't actually do.
Because let's be honest - if there wasn't a big reason to live where they do, and it wasn't a pain to work from another state, they wouldn't be there to begin with. They're paying the higher taxes because they benefit(ed) in some way.
They also benefit from being famous and threatening to leave.
It isn't unheard of.
Adam Carolla has been threatening to move out of California for like at least a decade at this point.
they threaten to move to push legislation which way they want.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Address at Worcester, Massachusetts
October 21, 1936
It's always a bluff like a kid throwing a temper tantrum going to "hold their breath".
Page left California specifically because of the so-called "Billionaire Tax", and is taking with him his family (which will inherit his vast riches), his philanthropy, his non-profits, many jobs, taxes and more. The effect will be generations of lost benefits to California.
There is absolutely 0 reason that someone worth $270 billion needs to worry about the 5% tax. The 5% tax will reduce his estimated worth by $13.5B bringing him to a paltry $256.5B.
To put $256.5B in perspective: over two /lifetimes/, he would need to spend around $4.5MM a day to exhaust that number, assuming it did not grow exponentially over that same time.
1. Google itself isn't moving. I don't think Larry is closely involved anymore, and a move out of state seems to prove that.
2. How much tax revenue did California even make from him? If he doesn't sell stock, then he has no capital gains to tax. That's the whole point of the wealth tax. The ultra-wealthy are infamous for tax avoidance schemes such as rotating loans against their stock to avoid capital gains.
It's tough to slim down on spending. Be it individuals or governments and quasi-governmental organizations. Companies can swiftly implement spending cuts and RIFs --sometimes aggressively.
Governments, though, there are threads throughout --elected officials often trade support for positions and favoritism and if they take those away, so do many of their fiercest people who get out the vote. Also, their voters are averse to having the services they've grown accustomed to getting cut.
So sometimes you need that official who knows he or she is a one termer but will go in and cut and cut. People will hate them but it will allow the government a chance to make a turnaround.
It would be better if we mainly taxed consumption directly. If you are a billionaire but spend $100k/yr I am fine with you paying the same taxes as anyone else spending $100k/yr.
I believe that taxing people proportionally on income earned by labor is a unifying element of a social contract. i.e., we are all contributing to the common good. Income from capital is "free money." You didn't work for it; you took it from somebody else in the form of interest, dividends, or some other rent-seeking financial magic.
At some point, wealth becomes corrosive to society. People acquire it just for the sake of acquiring more and building their personal power. It seems that wealth is used to build more mechanisms of rent-seeking to further extract money from people who make their money through labor.
That kind of non-beneficial use of wealth, rent-seeking, and financial magic should be the target of any tax system before taxing money earned by labor.
But if you recognize some benefit based on their value, you absolutely should pay taxes on that value.
The class interest of the billionaire capitalist is the same as the class interest of the millionaire capitalist is the same as the class interest of the small business owner. Unless all of the capitalists leave, the capitalist class will still control the entire economy of California.
"After we'd been in England for several years, I asked the people who do our taxes to check, and they told me that I actually saved money by moving to England. That's how high California state taxes are already."
If you make under say $200-250k, you pay way way higher taxes in the UK. Above that, if you are in a high tax US city/state .. US total fed/state/local taxes start to pull well ahead at the $500k & $1M income levels.
Seems like a defect.
This just reinforces my opinion that we shouldn't listen to billionaires about anything.
Larry Page leaves California to protect $12.5B from proposed wealth tax
He can live anywhere he wants to and have residency anywhere he wants to. This sounds like “Larry can’t afford to live in Cali and is forced to “move” to Florida and never set foot in Cali ever again” He’ll move his mail and get FL Driver License and continue to chill in Cali (which he should have done decade ago
Also, worth keeping in mind how posts that are "unrelated to technology itself" could arguably trigger the hard-core contingent here. So, just like how Trump's or Elon's bloviations get flagged here, PG's posts could, in theory, also evoke the purest hacker mentality -- at scale.
Interpret it as you wish :)
Google co-founder Larry Page moved to Florida from California in early 2026, purchasing over $188 million in Miami property. He left California to avoid a proposed 5% state wealth tax targeting billionaires, shifting his primary residence and assets to Florida, which has no state income tax.
Makes sense to me. Several businesses and individuals from NYC have also moved to Florida for similar reasons. If I were hard working or creative as them to be as wealthy I would do the same and I know others here would too, they just wouldn't likely admit or say it. None of that prevents one from having a satellite office in the former state.
To paraphrase Don Draper - That's what the money is for! (to live the life you want)
But I think for many that make that much money is a scoreboard primarily, and they've given up any normalcy of a personal life so long ago to get it that they don't really know what to do with themselves once they have the money.
We as a society can barely get along with one another as this world gets more inter-connected and as more incompatible cultures are forced to mix with one another. There are too many conflicting and incompatible situations to fix before we can even get close to equality. That is the reality I can see. Perhaps if we divided ourselves up into a matrices of 512 or 1024 groups and each group populated a planet of their own then perhaps some of those planets could achieve the desired equality. Maybe. No idea how long it would last.
Even the sci-fi dream of Gene Roddenberry's totally equal future came with a lot of pain, wars, chaos and after all that there was still significant inequality and violence and this was from someone that was a staunch believe in all forms of equality. Even he had to keep it real enough or people would not be able to suspend disbelief yet still fictional enough to allow escapism.
I'm perfect fine not being as wealthy as Larry Page and having all the stress and drama that comes with it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2026/02/09/ame...
