Jan
3
2026

Big Things Are Happening in Iran and Venezuela!

So we're gonna talk about something else instead. Take it away, Mr. Heaton:

And I am not a fan of "studies show" arguments, but…

Still, progressives don't really need even a "studies show" excuse for their eat-the-rich proposals. Instead, undisguised envy and resentment explains a lot.

The WaPo editorial board looks at a recent left-coast proposal and speculates: California will miss billionaires when they’re gone. (WaPo gifted link)

Many progressives think of taxation the way teenage boys think about cologne: if some is good, more must be great. California already reeks of overtaxation, but it’s thinking about trying out its most potent scent yet: a wealth tax. Just a whiff has some of the state’s wealthiest residents fleeing.

In 2012, California voters passed Proposition 30, increasing the marginal tax rate on high-income households up to 3 percent. This was sold as a temporary plug for budget holes during the Great Recession, but another initiative, Proposition 55, extended the taxes through 2030.

High earners responded by either leaving the state or reducing their taxable income. “These responses eroded 45.2 percent of state windfall tax revenues within the first year and 60.9 percent within 2 years,” economists Joshua Rauh and Ryan Shyu concluded in a 2024 paper.

But that history is not deterring the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents hospital workers, from collecting signatures to put a measure on November’s ballot that would slap a one-time, 5 percent wealth tax on the state’s billionaires, with the revenue primarily dedicated to health care spending. This includes illiquid paper wealth, such as a founder’s share of a startup.

"One-time" and "just on the billionaires" are obvious foot-in-the-door tactics.

John Gustavsson also comments perceptively on the proposal: California, and the Worst Wealth Tax in the World. (NR gifted link)

While American progressives champion a wealth tax as a novel tool to fight wealth inequality, to the rest of the world, wealth taxes are just as outdated as VHS tapes and floppy disks.

The abandonment of wealth taxes did not come about as a spontaneous gift to billionaires from European policymakers. Wealth taxes are by their nature cumbersome and expensive to administer, since they require tax authorities to make individual assessments of the size of someone’s assets — including highly illiquid assets — rather than just their income. While collecting information on the latter is rather easy with the cooperation of banks and employers, the former is not. Expensive legal battles are common as those targeted dispute the size of their wealth.

Enforcement difficulty, however, is only a minor issue compared to the sheer capital flight spurred by this type of tax. This also goes a long way toward explaining why so many European countries abolished their wealth taxes: As the European Union gradually integrated European economies and capital markets while also introducing freedom of movement between member states, it became much easier for wealthy individuals to move their businesses and themselves to member states without a wealth tax.

John notes that it's much easier to move yourself and your assets from California to (say) New Hampshire than "from Sweden to Spain".

Also of note:

  • We're still pretty steamed at the Zohran. Nellie Bowles' TGIF column talks not only about the wealth tax proposal, but also Minnesota's "Quality Learing Center"; the Epstein files; her wife's (Bari Weiss) battles with 60 Minutes; a Kenyan sex chatbot; last year's Palisades fire; and a David Mamet cartoon.

    But:

    So far our new Mayor Mamdani has announced: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” We’re doing communism, baby! It’s never been done before! Mamdani is everything we imagined. He’s the villain in an Ayn Rand novel, perfectly concocted. (My favorite part of his inauguration was Iris Schumer, whom I adore, sitting behind Mamdani with what the Daily Mail describes as “a face like thunder.” Me too, Iris. All I ever wanted was to live in a world run by Chuck and Iris, whatever new Bush family member Bohemian Grove selected, and Hillary Clinton. Instead, I’m going to be paying taxes to Zohran, who is immediately marching me to jail. Which one of you told him I was a debutante? You monster.)

    And more. I'm a Free Press subscriber. I don't know how much, if any, of Nellie's column is paywalled, so … here is an archive.today link. But you should subscribe.

  • Also jeering the Zohran's inaugural address… Noah Rothman: One Man’s ‘Warmth of Collectivism’ Is Another’s Inferno. (Here's another archive.today link)

    The nauseating draft managed to marry the gauzy romanticism of America’s aged flower children with the monomania of the Red Guards. It is a small comfort that the authors of that speech appear to genuinely believe true socialism has never been tried or else they would not have exhumed from their deserving graves so many threadbare socialist nostrums that reached their sell-by date on December 26, 1991. It’s not unreasonable to expect that this collection will prove to be about as good at governing as they are at speechwriting. Indeed, Mamdani himself tended with care to the trap he and his speechwriters set for his administration.

    In his address, the mayor chided the unnamed doubters who said that he should manage the sky-high expectations he himself had set. “The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations,” Mamdani declared. “Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously.” He would make New York City into a place where “there is no need too small to be met, no person too sick to be made healthy.” Indeed, in pledging to “govern without shame,” Mamdani made perhaps the only promise that he is all but certain to fulfill.

    So: if you want me, I'll be up here in New Hampshire.

  • Did you have "Lawless and Indiscriminate Murder" on your Impeachment Bingo Card? Fill in that square, my friend. Jacob Sullum points out that Cocaine smugglers who don't get bombed often aren't even charged by the DOJ.

    The U.S. Coast Guard is still intercepting boats suspected of carrying illegal drugs, as it did for decades before Trump deemed that strategy insufficiently violent. Between September 1 and November 30, The New York Times reports, "the Coast Guard interdicted 38 vessels suspected of smuggling drugs." During the same period, the U.S. military blew up 22 suspected drug boats, killing 83 people. The smugglers who were lucky enough to be caught by the Coast Guard met a strikingly different fate: By and large, they were returned to their home countries because the Justice Department declined to prosecute them.

    Under U.S. law, the death penalty generally is not available in drug cases. But the Trump administration says cocaine couriers deserve death, delivered without legal authorization or any semblance of due process, because supplying Americans with the drugs they want is tantamount to murder. It also says cocaine couriers are committing crimes so minor that prosecuting them would be a waste of Justice Department resources. That blatant inconsistency exposes the fallacy of conflating drug smuggling with violent aggression.

    I'll probably have something to say about Venezuela and Iran tomorrow. Stay tuned.