I understand this. I’m also not convinced you realize just how rich multi-billionaires are. You’re not alone. Humans aren’t really programmed to think in numbers that large. I’m also convinced you don’t know how billionaires leverage their wealth to make it even more valuable.
Much like Sanders, you are making the wrong argument to reach the right conclusion. "They can afford it!"
These guys don't pay *any* meaningful taxes, but benefit disproportionately from the taxes that the population pays to generate their wealth.
I live within a few miles of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Nvidia. The South Bay spends a LOT of money on infrastructure to keep those companies humming. Roadway expansions, new exits and offramps, mass transit and bike/ped infrastructure, power infrastructure, airports. Also we need to build a lot of affordable housing stock, that is subsidized by the government to house people being displaced by the employee base, but who are needed to keep the area livable (retail workers, janitors, teachers, etc...)
Brin/Zuck/Page - they have a lot of wealth but as Custard points out, most of it is in shares of their companies and almost all of that is unrealized capital gains. What do they live on? Loans pulled against that which they pay low interest rates, to avoid taxable events. Then when they croak, they leave the stock to heirs at a stepped up basis and never pay the taxes, and they will spend decades trying to figure out how to game inheritance taxes.
Given their disproportional benefit from the taxes paid by the public and the lower percentages of their contribution to pay those taxes, eventually the proletariat will grasp at a straw to correct that imbalance. This prop is pretty gimmickly but I'm almost certainly going to vote for it because while it's designed poorly, it will nonetheless do something towards that correction.
I'm not worried one whit about those guys moving. They don't pay any taxes anyway. And while they started up a company (past tense) that employs a lot of people who DO pay taxes, their current wealth isn't being reinvested into anything, that would require a liquidation event and thus taxes. Their wealth is frozen in amber. Almost all of the benefit to the state that they bring under current tax law is already being realized. Their departure means nothing. They can't move the companies. Google's campus hosts tens of thousands of people who won't want to move even if a suitable replacement campus could be found, same with Facebook, and Pinchai/Zuck have made it very clear they want their employees in the office.
Where are they gonna move? Austin? Traffic in Austin is legendary, even without an extra 100,000 tech workers. And housing there is already stressed. There is NO replacement location.
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