Politicians love nothing more than spending, as our dangerously surging fiscal deficits clearly show. But rather than cut unnecessary spending, which would be the most logical thing, Democrats continue to push the dumbest non-solution for our soaring spending, deficits, and debt: tax the rich.
When asked why he robbed banks, Depression-era bank-robber Willie Sutton reportedly responded: “Because that’s where the money is.”
Funny, but elected Democrats in blue states today deploy the same logic in their growing calls to “tax the rich.”
As CNBC’s Robert Frank recently noted, “A new ‘blue wave’ of tax hikes on the wealthy is rippling through state legislatures, as Virginia, Washington state, Rhode Island and others join California in calls for higher taxes on top earners and billionaires.”
Don’t forget New York. There, a “Tax The Rich” rally on Wednesday in the state’s capital brought heavy backing from unions and far-left Dems, which in the Empire State means the entire Democratic Party.
Their proposal would, the New York Post editorial board notes, end up “socking not just millionaires but even couples making just $500,000, who’d see their taxes rise a whopping 10%. And top earners would face a top rate of 24% — the highest not just in America but the world.“
And, of course, California is now discovering, to its shocked regret, that super-smart and ultra-mobile rich people and entrepreneurs don’t sit still to let their income and wealth be stripped off them by greedy leftist politicians.
No, they leave and go elsewhere, taking their wealth, taxes, companies, and, most importantly, high-paying jobs with them.
California’s bitter experience should serve as an object lesson in capital flight. But socialists don’t care. They think your money should be theirs to spend. They use billionaires as targets, because there’s so much envy and resentment over their wealth.
Any state now contemplating punitive taxes on the wealthy would do well to learn from what’s happening to California, where activists, unions, and Democratic politicians are trying to get an initiative on the ballot called the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act.”
Its goal: to impose “a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth.”
It’s already having a nightmare impact on California’s economy, with at least 7 entrepreneurial, job-creating billionaires relocating to friendlier states and taking their businesses, technology, and highly-skilled and highly-paid workforces with them.
And California’s already poorer for it.
As we noted last month, the billionaire tax “even officially on the California ballot yet, but that hasn’t stopped businessmen, entrepreneurs, and investors from fleeing the state, taking $1 trillion in wealth – along with jobs and opportunity – with them.”
It isn’t just billionaires. Other high-income taxpayers fear they will be next in line to have even more of their wealth and incomes taken by the state’s far-left legislature. They, too, are leaving in droves.
As Wayne Winegarden of the Pacific Research Institute observes, the disincentives to entrepreneurial investments are a disaster in the making for California.
PRI’s own economic and tax model shows that “the size of California’s economy could shrink between 3.0% and 6.7% relative to the baseline. Further, the growth in the average household’s income would be between $1,900 and $4,300 smaller, the growth in jobs would be between 200,000 and half a million less, and the exodus of people from the state would increase between 43,000 and 95,000.”
In short, the state’s war on success will leave it poorer, smaller, and politically weaker.
What’s truly tragic is that Democrats hope to take this campaign national. And if they regain control of Congress in 2026, you better believe they’ll try.
Americans beware. Avoid the siren-song of “tax the rich,” the notion that by seizing all or part of billionaires’ assets and income, America would get rid of its trillion-dollar deficits and suddenly be flush with cash. It’s a lie.
As the National Taxpayers Union Foundation explains:
On average, . . . the federal government spent about $19.2 billion per day (in 2025). At this level of spending, raising the average federal tax rate on the top 1% from its current level of 26.09% to 30% would fund the government for only 6 additional days. Even . . . seizing the entire income of the top 1% by taxing them at an average federal rate of 100% would not even fund the government for half a year — only raising enough revenue to fund 127 days of government spending.
“Tax the rich” is a bankrupt slogan of far-left Democrats as they try to siphon even more money from society’s most creative class — its entrepreneurs, inventers, and builders — and waste it instead on the worst-run part of our economy: Big government.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board