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.
If I were as wealthy as them I would not mind paying a 5% tax after years of tax avoidance. But that’s just one of the many reasons why I am not as wealthy as they are.
In agreement. It strikes me as contradictory to be so wealthy you can never spend it all, but price sensitive enough to uproot your life over a tax?
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.
Something needs to be done about the historic inequality in this country. It will undue all the “innovation” (ie selling ads and addicting people to the internet) that these tech billionaires have contributed.
Inequality will always be a thing. I am not saying it should be, just that it will be. Different people have different skill-sets, are in the right or wrong places at the right or wrong time, have different connections with people and a million other factors. Some are born with good RNG, some with a bad roll.
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.
If you want to engage honestly, you can start by acknowledging that there is an enormous gap between believing that "record breaking wealth inequality is bad and causing societal problems" vs "no inequality should exist in any capacity."
If I am being honest inequality will always vary wildly based on the monetary policies and all the things I mentioned. To me anything else is getting into vague unattainable unrealistic ideologies. No harm in dreaming, everyone should. No harm in envy either even if some think it is unhealthy. It's all human nature.
If someone has a gazillion gazillion gazillion mega-bucks that does not harm me in any way shape or form. More power to them. I would be fine with them also collecting medicare and social security especially if they, like me, had to pay into social security their entire working life and could not opt out.
If we can hold out for machines like a holodeck then we can truly live any fantasy and that may be a nice form of escapism. No idea how long it will be for such machines to exist.
And that's fine. The pay out is also on a scale. I have no desire to "rob the rich". Everyone pays into corrupt governments and fraudulent wasteful government programs. I would rather cut 50% of all programs every year to remove the burden from all citizens.
It might be fine but it's not a brag that 'the billionaire is contributing'.
Reminder that the Republican policy for 40 years has been to 'starve the beast' and in other ways sabotage government programs so that exactly your argument can be presented. Prior to that intentional sabotage by Republicans and aligned political partisans against the United States we had much less fraudulent and wasteful government. When half of the politicians/oversite/management ACTIVELY wants government (and by extension the country) to fail and engage in policies intended to created failure in the government, it's hard to have effective government.
As it pertains to monetary policies there is no left, no right, no democrats, no republicans. It's the same left and right leg attached to the same ass. Each boot will pretend to hate the other guy but its just a show to make people fight and keep them distracted. Both sides have the same agenda, they just have a different style of kicking our asses. Each side wears a different shade of lipstick.
You are basically an anarchist then. There are examples of good governance in the world, where the rule of law hasn’t been eroded by the people you are set on protecting. The problem with billionaires is more about the problem of power in the hands of a few greedy people who change the balance of power in their favor.
No I am a leave people alone that are not harming me. I am not envious and I am not a power tripper. If I want to help those in need then I will push my government to cut programs. Governments do not help those in need as they have no incentive to do so. They will pocket the money as they do every ... single ... damn ... time. This never changes and never will.
That’s simply not true, governments help billions of people in many ways, especially people with disabilities, children (ie labor protections), women, etc. You are completely disingenuous to say otherwise. Billionaires are harming many people through eroding the institutions that protect the average people (rulings like citizens united, trumps election, etc). You don’t seem like a person with a real perspective to me.
In the 10% range like the normal societal expectation (or requirement if you are religious and actually follow your religion but mine wasn't religious giving). Was higher when I made good money. Dragged down by a decade of not doing well.
My lifetime giving is more than I paid for my current house. The house in discussion for him is just one of how many that he owns? Or how many boats that count as 'second homes' under tax rules? Also consider he has paid for the entirely of this house, the average person giving 5-10% hasn't come close to paying for their house, so you need to go based off the 'already paid' amount. Also their home would be their largest asset, so going by that his largest asset for comparison would be his stock holdings, an order of magnitude larger than the cost of one of his homes.
Old boy is a billionaire, not a rando, and has proven he has zero shame. Despite starting their companies with techno-optimist claims, the robber barons had more shame/were more decent people/supported society more than the average tech billionaire.
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.