California's proposed billionaire tax says it will raise $100 billion for healthcare, food assistance, and education. New research from Stanford's Hoover Institution puts the real number closer to $40 billion — and argues the measure could leave the state worse off once billionaire departures are factored in.
This week, Phil talks with Hoover Institution research fellow Benjamin Robert Jaros, co-author of that research, about the mechanics of Proposition 40, the migration numbers driving the disagreement, and what it means for California voters this November.
Follow California Underground on Substack: caunderground.substack.com
Get early access to The Gilded State, Phil's upcoming book on California politics: www.thegildedstate.com
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Tonight we have one guest, one ballot proposition, $60 billion
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worth of disagreement. We're talking about the
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California proposed billionaires tax, which would tax
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billionaires 5% of their total net worth.
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My guest is Benjamin Jarros from the Hoover Institution, who will
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be discussing how this actually is going to affect our economy
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and how it might actually cost the state.
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We're going to get into that all and more on this episode of
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California Underground starting right now.
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What's going on, everybody? Thanks for tuning in to another
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episode of the California Underground.
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I am your host, Phil. Tonight we have a special guest,
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Benjamin Jaros from the Hoover Institution.
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He is an economist. We're going to be talking all
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about the proposed billionaires tax is going to be on the ballot
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this November. So let me bring him in.
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Give me one second. And there we go.
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Ben, thank you for joining this show.
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It's so nice to have you on. This is such a big controversial
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ballot proposition. It's one of the probably the
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biggest controversial, most talked about that is on the
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ballot this upcoming November. It's Prop 40.
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And I know I've talked about it a lot.
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I've made my my statements about it, but I think it's important
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to have someone of your caliber come on the show and really
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explain the economic side of it and the numbers of it.
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Because you've been studying this, you've actually done a
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study on this. So First off, Ben, welcome to
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the show. Tell us a little bit about
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yourself and introduce yourself to the guests.
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All right. Well, thank you for having me
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on, Phil. Appreciate all the work you're
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doing at California Underground. My name is Ben Jaros.
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I am a research fellow and economist at Stanford
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University's Hoover Institution. And my research areas of
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specialty are largely in the tax space, tax policy space,
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federal, state and local income, property sales or tariff.
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I could do work on any of those major areas.
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And in the last six months, we've done a lot of work on
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California's wealth tax. We've done a couple different
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papers. We have a few more coming.
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There's always a lot that this this proposal has baked into it.
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But our first paper that we put out actually set out as somewhat
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of a response to the the proponents expert report on the
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ACT where they claimed the ACT would raise $100 billion.
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And we decided to do a revenue estimate of our own.
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And so that was called the Net Present Value of the Billionaire
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Tax Act because, well, we know billionaires, you know, they,
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they have assets that you can tax, you can raise money through
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those through that. That's the wealth tax.
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But then they also pay a lot in income taxes.
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And it wasn't, it certainly wasn't very clear that the from
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the proponents that they were at adequately incorporating the
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cost of losing income tax payments of billionaires.
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So we set out to actually do a net present value the the
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conclusion of that paper that the kind of the, the big
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takeaways first are our central revenue estimate.
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We estimate that the tax will raise around $40 billion.
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It's not $100 billion. And then second, you know
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billionaires pay between anywhere between 3.23 point 3 to
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5.8 or about $6 billion annually in income taxes.
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Well, they pay that every year and as as you know Phil and I
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assume many of your listeners know, but for those that don't,
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if in public finance or just financial economics in general,
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if you have a return, you know it's coming in every year, you
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want to discount it back to the present day.
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So you're going to discount that at some some interest rate or
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just a discount rate or hurdle rate we discounted into the
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future. So we discounted the potentially
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lost fraction of income tax revenue.
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So we also, so we estimate some lost billionaires from who are
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going to leave because of the tax.
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And then from that estimated loss, we we calculate the
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fraction of income taxes that are also going to be lost and
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then we discount it back. And then to be fair, as you
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know, as when we set out to write this paper, we really
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wrote it from the perspective of if we worked at the Lao, the
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Legislative Analyst Office, which is the, the group that
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scores legislation out out of Sacramento, how would we
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approach estimating the effects of this bill?
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And the way that we, we really worked through that math was,
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well, there's a whole range of parameters, maybe this, the
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lower bound, the very lower bound, this, this tax might
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raise 30343035 billion. And on the upper bound, assuming
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no one's leaving out of the people who've already publicly
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declared you have $67 billion. And then you have a range of
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discount rates. So 1 1/2 percent is standard in
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some academic literature up to 4 1/2%, right?
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And then lastly, that range of income tax revenue, so 3 point
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3.3 or so to 5.8. So then we simulate over the,
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the range of those three different parameters and over
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100 different simulations. So the combinations of all those
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different ranges, we estimated that on average the state would
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lose $25 billion. So when you actually discount
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out the income tax payments and you've and you're and you're
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taking the whole range or even being pretty generous on the
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upper bound of how much could this collect more than what we
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actually estimate in, in the long run, the state is going to
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lose revenue, at least from our our projection there.
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And that was this, this really important paper and, and not
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just for for voters, but also for the proponents to think
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through the potential consequences of passing.
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And I think that paper, in addition to others looking at it
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beyond us, is what has kind of led to such a broad coalition of
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individuals opposing the tax. Is that the state.
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This is not a free lunch. This is not just a we're gonna
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we're gonna pass this. We're gonna get 100 billion for
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healthcare. Billionaires will be fine.
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No, there's, there's potential costs out here that aren't being
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priced in and. Yeah, I was, I was gonna, I was
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gonna say let's, before we get into the nitty gritty, let's
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talk about what Prop 40 does, because it it was.
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So we talked about the billionaire's proposed tax.
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It's now Prop 40. So everyone burn this into your
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memory that Prop 40 is the billionaire's proposed tax.
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Walk us through, if someone's listening and they go, I don't
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understand, what's the point of this tax?
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You know, try and explain to someone off the street who's
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like, well, that sounds fair. Like let's tax the billionaires.
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They should be paying more. Like explain to them what the
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mechanics of this are. And then we'll get into the
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nitty gritty about the study and kind of really dive into the
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numbers. Sure.
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Yeah. So what what?
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It is so the proponents have got on the ballot that a retroactive
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wealth tax retroactive to January 1st of this year 2026.
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So if you are have over a billion dollars in assets and
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you lived in the state of California, you had residents.
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It's a key keyword here on the state of California on January
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1st, 2026. And then the voters pass it.
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Then you will owe a tax of 5% of your net assets.
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Last residential real estate. That's the primary.
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There are other modest exclusions, but that's the
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primary asset exclusion. And the reason they do that is
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to get around Prop 13, which you know has restrictions on, on
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property, on property tax changes.
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That's, that's the basics of it. Any other parts you want to go
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into on mechanics of the actual tax fill?
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Yeah, we were talking before the show.
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I don't think people realize when they say 5% of a
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billionaire's net worth that if you look at the actual ballot
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language, we were kind of going back and forth before the show
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about kind of shocking how much they include like even me as a
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trust and estate's attorney, I was like, they're including
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stuff inside trusts in your estate planning.
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Like they are literally saying everything that you own or have
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an interest in. We're going to calculate that as
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part of your thing and then we're going to tax you on that,
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which sounds almost to to the non educated person or the
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person who doesn't understand. Yeah, let's tax them on their
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net worth, but that's a big issue because you're taxing
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billionaires on their net worth, not actual money in the bank,
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correct? Exactly that is there is a clear
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it would be it's called a liquidity problem to pay the tax
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it and this comes up in property tax situations as well, where
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the actual bill is worth more than the the cash value of of
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what someone has the the cash that someone has to pay for a
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tax. And what's in particular of
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interest for the California billionaires is there's a lot of
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business equity in in in private or publicly held by founders,
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namely, you know, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Google, Although
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they they laughed and maybe that's probably why they laughed
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is if you have to, if you if you potentially could be giving up
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ownership share to pay this tax. That's quite the that's a that's
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a very high cost so that you know, if if you don't have the
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assets to, if you don't have the liquid assets to pay it is the,
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the, the initiative has some language that you can defer it
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up through five years, but there's a penalty for doing so.
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So it's not clear from a net present value perspective
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either. If you were in that, if it was
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passed and you're a billionaire that you're going to defer, They
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try and make that also, they try and penalize that out.
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But they in Kate, they use that as the lever of, well, this is
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if you, this is if you don't have the the liquid cash on hand
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to pay this tax, what you can defer and do this other thing.
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But it's it's more of a talking point than what you would want
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to do. Yeah.
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It's I think because of the uncertainty of it and because it
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is. So again, I'm trying to figure
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out the word. It's not pie in the sky.
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It's sort of more idealistic than realistic.
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You see a lot of these billionaires who are going,
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well, I'm just going to get out of Dodge.
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And we saw last year literally December, last week of December
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is like December 30th, 31st, you were seeing a lot of
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billionaires cut and run because they're like, well, I'm not
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going to be, I'm not going to wait to see what happens with
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this, if I'm still here, January 1st, 2026, which I have a whole
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issue with the constitutionality of how do you go and
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retroactively tax someone when the tax is not in effect until
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we vote on it in November, which I think that's probably gonna be
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a whole legal battle. I don't know if you guys studied
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that or have an opinion on that, but that to me, I, I watch it.
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I'm like, that's insane that it's, they're trying to go
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backwards and set this precedent that they can start
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retroactively enacting taxes, which for every Californian
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should be absolutely terrifying if that's the precedent they're
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going to set, right? Yeah, I would feel a very
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interesting point when I So what we we talk about that, it's
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called the retroactive residency clause of the Billionaire Tax
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Act and there's a lot to unpack in there.
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There will certainly, if this passes, there will certainly be
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a lawsuit. If not, you know, everyone who
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got caught in the dragnet will be part of that lawsuit because
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what needs to be resolved and what are the case laws at hand?
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So most taxes that are retroactive on, on general and
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average in the US, you know, you have retroactive assessments on,
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on property. So there's a whole set of
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property tax case law that's going to back up some
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retroactive assessments. Fair.
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OK. But then you have residency in
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the state of California. Residency itself is a function
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of the most in general, the the income tax case law.
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If you own an asset in California, you know, it's
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subject to property tax on the local level.
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You know, also there's Prop 13 that governs, you know, costs
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there. But the property tax case law is
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different than the residency case law, which, you know, in
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general 183 days. There are other different
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requirements. The income tax, they're trying
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to say, no, you're a resident if you are a resident on just one
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day and it's all the way back here.
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So they're trying to apply this income tax case law to a
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snapshot in time one day. That's going to be challenge
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one, no doubt. But then simultaneously the fact
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that you couldn't anticipate it is part of why billionaires have
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probably been leaving even after the departure date and most
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notably Zuckerberg in February. And this would certainly get
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challenged through the state courts.
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And you could argue if it if the state of California wants to
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fight it all the way, you know, potentially to the Supreme Court
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where if it passes mainly that OK, in November, this has
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passed. And then it's the residency is
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is effective retroactive. The you you owe it effective
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retroactive 11 months that retroactivity for a tax.
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There's some federal precedent on that on currently existing
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tax, a currently existing change in estate tax that was debated
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and actively and that one was upheld.
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But brand new taxes Supreme Court did not uphold those.
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So there's there's gonna and there's Gray area there.
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So it's not a, that's not money in the bank for the proponents,
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even though they're calling it that.
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And that's a long legal battle for the state if it passes.
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So the question is whether it's worth fighting that.
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And, and the secondary point there is, you know, all the
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unintended consequences of, OK, we'll tax you on your, your
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assets. So it, it would be a court case.
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You know, we're calling it that, that part of the retroactive
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residency 'cause we're not tax attorneys, but we have some tax
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attorneys on our, our team who we've worked through on that.
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We are working on having a couple different papers out on
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that part, at least one on that area of the tax in particular.
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But it's certainly, it's certainly a legal issue.
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And as you know, a trusted a trust attorney, you would
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understand at least some parts of that recognize the clear, you
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know, standing litigation right away if it passes.
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It's, I'm looking at my notes here and it says that roughly
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$536 billion in wealth has left the state already with Sergey
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Brin and Larry Page. Is that a real revenue number?
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Is that something that people can actually stick to?
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Or is that estimated? Or is that like an actual number
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that people can stick to and say that's how much we've already
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lost just by proposing this? Well, you, I I think you could,
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you could stick to that, at least if you're going off
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publicly confirmed departures from the news.
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The new that's the New York Times is Lib Brennan page about
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28% of the initial of the wealth that sat in the state of
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California billionaires assets portfolio in the middle of
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October. So prior to filing, 28% of it
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was gone by January 1st, at least, you know, saying that
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this person is is leaving and they're they've they've tried to
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move their residence prior to the cut off date.
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So they, the proponents are going to say there's no way they
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could have done that. But again, that's going to hinge
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on whether they can apply income tax case law, which requires a
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year, you know, 183 days plus 186 days of residents to one day
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tall ask right. The the alternative would be,
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well, you know, even even if you know that's you're right on that
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58, you know, 53 or so 530 billion or so the Brandon page
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moves, but then also there are other moves as well.
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So that's that's correct. OK.
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All right. I think we've given everyone
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enough idea of the setup of what's going on here.
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I think it's time to really dive into the nitty gritty.
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You were kind of going into it at the beginning.
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I wanted to kind of just steer you away so we could really
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focus on it and dive in. And you completed this study
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with Joshua Raw, also at the Hoover Institution.
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So walk us through in plain English, for people who are not
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professional economists like myself, what it was you set out
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to do, what you were measuring, and what was what was it you
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were trying to answer for this study?
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Yeah. So the way and I said it
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earlier, so I'll, I'll just go back into it.
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We set out to, if we worked the Lao, if we were, you know,
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trying to estimate this as revenue, as economist, trying to
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estimate the revenue effects of the tax.
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You know what, you know what, what, what's going to, what's
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the cost of this day going to be?
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What's the revenue of this day going to be?
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And you know, a tax and, and revenue estimation.
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You want to define your base and then apply your rates.
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And then the last thing you're going to do before you apply the
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rates, you're going to apply something called behavioral
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response is with respect to how high that rate is.
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And behavioral response exists for every tax you tax income,
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more people on average will work less or they in the long run may
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move right and in the in the in the short run, they could evade
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or avoid evasion is any illegal means of getting out of a tax
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and avoidance is legal. So if you're going to tax my
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income, maybe I'm more will I would prefer you I get more
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generous benefits, etcetera. That's a potential example of of
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avoidance. So with with the billionaire Tax
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Act, well, you're going to tax my assets in the state of
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California. Well, what are my options?
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Well, the first clear out by residential real estate that's
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clearly excluded. So you'll notice even when they
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have the billionaires have been making these moves, they're
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buying pretty expensive properties somewhere else.
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Why would you want to do that? Well, that immediately becomes
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an asset that they can't touch because it's excluded by by the
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statute. So that's a clear that's
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avoidance right away. If you the second part of that
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as well, can I get out before can I move out?
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Moving is, is the strongest response of, of avoidance
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legally you say I'm I'm going to get out of here.
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The third part, you know, and I guess this, this part is
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somewhere between evasion and avoidance.
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Valuation of these assets is going to be extraordinarily
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difficult, especially privately or closely held business assets.
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You know what's how, what is an intangible brand worth that
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hasn't gone through an IPO, right?
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You have assets of the firm and they have ownership of that
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firm. But part of what's value is
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valuable is the intangible property, IE the brand and what
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what the expected future of this company.
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And that might be intimately tied to California too.
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I'm not a I'm not a valuation economist.
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There are that's a whole subset within the field that's going to
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be if it passes. That's a whole sub part of this.
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So what are these? So what we've been using and
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what the proponents have been using is Forbes and.
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Just to jump in here, who does the State of California think is
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going to do the valuations? Is it is it beholden on the
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taxpayer that they have to do the valuation or is it the state
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is going to do valuations? The way I read it, and this
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could be wrong, is that the state of California is, is going
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to do it, but I imagine that taxpayers can challenge that.
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That's I and, and I will, I will, I'm also going to punt on
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this because I, I haven't read the valuation section of this
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act since December. So I.
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Yeah, I was just curious. That's an interesting wrinkle.
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I read I read about it and I thought that's going to be a
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mess and moved on to other parts the ACT.
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But yeah, so I mean it is so so someone else comments wants to
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quickly scan it. Feel free, would love to chat
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about it. Yeah.
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And as I said in the chat, if anybody has any questions for
00:21:08
Ben, you know, it's not very often we have an economist from
00:21:12
the Hoover Institution on the show of his caliber.
00:21:15
So fire away. He's he's the guy to ask all
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these complicated questions about.
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Also, I want to give a shout out to the people who are checking
00:21:22
in live in the chat, Palm Desert, Redlands, Sacramento.
00:21:25
Thank you, everyone for tuning in.
00:21:27
Yeah, we were talking about valuation and avoidance.
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I don't want to stop you right there.
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If you want to keep going. Well, we can.
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Yeah, let's move. What?
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What else you want to talk about?
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No, no, I was just going to go off of, OK, so already we have
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there's an issue with valuation, which is going to be a nightmare
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because whether the state's doing it or whether they hire
00:21:50
their own evaluators who are going to value it at a certain
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thing, it's going to be a mess to figure that out.
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Who's actually valuing what. Is it being valued properly
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overvalued, undervalued? And to your point about there's
00:22:03
already money leaving the state because people are moving maybe
00:22:08
their interest in commercial property and they're moving it
00:22:10
to other states or they're moving their assets to other
00:22:13
states through different channels.
00:22:15
California's already dealing with an issue of commercial
00:22:17
property. A lot of downtowns are already
00:22:20
facing a lot of empty commercial spaces.
00:22:24
It looks like a lot of downtowns are starting to see.
00:22:26
San Francisco is one of them. LA Tech is moving out of San
00:22:29
Francisco. Downtown San Diego's facing a
00:22:32
lot of it. LA, obviously for many different
00:22:34
reasons. So we're already seeing the
00:22:37
behavioral response. And before we hopped on, we were
00:22:41
talking a lot about some of the thinkers that I got into a
00:22:45
couple years ago and kind of blew my mind.
00:22:48
And I suggest anyone who's listening to the show, check out
00:22:52
Mises, check out Hayek, check out Rothbard.
00:22:55
Like these guys, especially Mises was talking about in human
00:22:59
action, how behavioral, how human behavior is measured by
00:23:04
incentives. And if they are taxed at a
00:23:08
certain amount, their obvious reaction is, well, I don't want
00:23:11
to get taxed at that certain amount.
00:23:13
I'm just going to leave and I'm going to take my toys with me.
00:23:17
And especially if you're taxing me on everything, then I'm going
00:23:20
to take all my toys and leave. It's not just my income.
00:23:23
It's not just people think it's a salary.
00:23:26
When it comes to billionaires, they always think, well, they
00:23:29
always like to use these kind of garbled numbers of, you know,
00:23:33
Elon Musk doesn't pay the same tax rate or as much as his
00:23:37
secretary or Warren Buffett doesn't pay as much as his
00:23:39
secretary. But they don't look at the fact
00:23:42
that it's completely his net worth is different than his
00:23:45
income. I may be getting off topic here.
00:23:47
My, my point is, is that behaviorally we're already
00:23:51
seeing the ramifications of this billionaires tax, proposed
00:23:55
billionaires tax. We haven't even enacted it yet.
00:23:59
So how much of your study really went into the behavioral of what
00:24:04
people were looking at and cost benefit of saying, I don't, I'm
00:24:08
not going to risk it and be here anymore, I just want to get out
00:24:11
of here and not risk being taxed at this price.
00:24:13
What did your study say about that?
00:24:16
So we didn't dig too much and that would be, you know, kind of
00:24:18
generally the risk aversion of the taxpayers.
00:24:21
We didn't dig too much into that concept.
00:24:23
We really just went through who, who is public, who have we
00:24:28
publicly, who can we publicly confirm as said they've they've
00:24:32
changed residents or attempting to change residents either
00:24:35
before or after when we did the paper or, or either before the
00:24:40
snapshot date or after the snapshot date before we
00:24:42
published the paper. And then we tried to estimate,
00:24:46
well, these are only the billionaires who are public, you
00:24:49
know, what about the ones who didn't publicly leave?
00:24:51
And I imagine certainly a lot of that, you know, the, the list
00:24:55
has a lot of concentration, the top 25 or something like 60% of
00:24:58
the whole list, that bottom 100 is all one to two.
00:25:04
They're, they're merely, you know, 1 to $2 billion, you know,
00:25:08
billionaires. But I imagine if you're in that
00:25:11
part of the list, you want want to leave discreetly if you can.
00:25:15
So you want to try, we tried to estimate, OK, what, what
00:25:17
fraction of these people could try and leave?
00:25:20
And so we use some European wild tax literature to estimate, OK,
00:25:23
what fraction might also believe in.
00:25:25
And that's, that's so we got that, you know, that's how we
00:25:28
got that central estimate of 40 billion annually.
00:25:32
And but for the actual, for the full paper, we went through the
00:25:37
range. So we took from the lower bound
00:25:39
to the upper bound on revenue. And that 67 billion is very
00:25:43
generous to the proponents. That's just excluding the
00:25:46
billionaires who who we know who we know laughed, at least based
00:25:51
on the public accounts before the snapshot date of January
00:25:55
1st. I'm going to get to the
00:25:57
proponents in a minute because I, I imagine there's people on
00:26:00
the other side of this argument that they've got people to write
00:26:03
their own studies on this. I want to get back to really the
00:26:09
core of this issue is this is supposed to be a revenue raising
00:26:13
measure, but your study showed that it is a tax and a -24.7
00:26:20
billion once you factor in all the lost future income income
00:26:25
tax revenue. Explain to us how you came to
00:26:28
that number and what that means for California.
00:26:33
Yeah. So that, that has to do with the
00:26:35
range of the, the 100th, the simulated range of you know, so
00:26:41
we took the range of parameters from the 35 billion to 67
00:26:43
billion, the discount rates at 1 1/2 to 4.5 S the future income
00:26:48
tax payments are going to discount back.
00:26:51
And then, you know, billionaires do still pay some income taxes.
00:26:54
They pay between 3.3 and 5.8. We take those ranges, you know,
00:27:02
we simulate 100 different, you know, combinations of those
00:27:06
parameters. And that's we came up with that
00:27:08
value when you're discounting all the lost income tax revenue
00:27:12
and you have some situations, right, about 30% of those
00:27:16
simulated scenarios were positive revenue, but they
00:27:20
weren't very positive, right? They were somewhere between the,
00:27:24
you know, 45 billion ish to zero and they were less than a, you
00:27:30
know, they're around 1/3 of what of our scenarios.
00:27:36
So there's trade-offs, right to even in the the positive revenue
00:27:39
situations, there's trade-offs to that revenue, IE wise are
00:27:43
going to fund and then, you know, just state want to fund
00:27:46
that We can, you know, we can get into that shortly.
00:27:48
But yeah, I mean that we, we tried to be very thorough with
00:27:53
the range. We tried to we published you,
00:27:56
you can find our data publicly available.
00:27:58
You can audit it yourself. You can look at our code.
00:28:02
Any curiosity around that? If you if you please feel free.
00:28:07
Yeah, I think that's the that's the best way to do research like
00:28:09
this is especially on a controversial issues.
00:28:12
OK, here's our show, our work. Here it is.
00:28:16
Yeah, this isn't an opinion piece.
00:28:18
This is a well studied presented study.
00:28:22
Now are there anybody else on the opposite side who has been
00:28:27
conducting studies about this billionaire's tax?
00:28:30
That is the pro argument that would counter your argument.
00:28:36
Are is there anybody out there like that doing that?
00:28:38
Yeah. So the primary, the, so the
00:28:40
initial round of experts on the extra report were Brian Galla,
00:28:45
and he's a law law professor. He's at UC Berkeley now.
00:28:51
Then Darian Shansky, Dave Gammage and Emanuel Saez.
00:28:58
Those were the those were the so there's three tax attorneys, tax
00:29:03
lawyers, tax law professors, and then Emanuel Saez, the economist
00:29:07
at UC Berkeley. And then in a follow up piece.
00:29:12
So then they had another response to our paper in March.
00:29:17
And we just, you know, it it when their response came out,
00:29:22
there was just as a contention that they didn't, we did not
00:29:27
think that they were rigorously engaging with our study.
00:29:31
So we did not put out a response to their response.
00:29:33
So we just kind of let their response go up.
00:29:38
Let let them make that statement.
00:29:41
So what was some of their assertion?
00:29:43
What was what was their response to your response?
00:29:47
I mean, you have you have the data and the evidence to back it
00:29:49
up and you're saying that they kind of responded didn't really
00:29:52
engage with your argument. What it What did they say that
00:29:55
they didn't really engage with your argument?
00:29:57
So the first, I mean, I'll start positive from reading their
00:30:01
response. The first mistake they made that
00:30:04
we pointed out in March versus their expert.
00:30:06
So they put their extra report out January, 1st week of January
00:30:09
when it got on the when they're trying to get on the ballot, we
00:30:12
put ours out first week of March.
00:30:16
They had included Larry Ellison in their base, which Larry
00:30:19
Ellison is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world.
00:30:22
So including him in your base adds $12 billion to your ass
00:30:25
went off the bat. Nothing.
00:30:28
He, he publicly left to Hawaii in 2020 and is now a resident of
00:30:33
Florida. So that was just a clear problem
00:30:37
to have him in the base. So actually in their response,
00:30:40
they, they hedged a little bit, but they acknowledged that.
00:30:43
So I want to give them credit for that 'cause that, you know,
00:30:47
should, you know, they, they then they found other ways to
00:30:50
get back to 100 billion. That's kind of the potentially
00:30:54
the issue, what I would say potentially would have been
00:30:59
desired out of a, a response meeting us towards our, our
00:31:03
report. You know, they, they pretty much
00:31:07
said these people who publicly in the New York Times, etcetera
00:31:10
have said they changed residents.
00:31:11
There's no way they could have left in time.
00:31:13
They just dismiss it like they could not have done it.
00:31:17
And, you know, maybe that's right, but that depends on all
00:31:21
the assumptions I laid earlier out on residency and, and tax
00:31:25
law. And I wouldn't count as a, you
00:31:29
know, I wouldn't count those dollars before they're in the
00:31:32
Department of Revenue for the state of California.
00:31:35
I think that's it. You know, it's in that sense.
00:31:39
And that's just the general characterization of that
00:31:42
response to our response. Then there was a second paper by
00:31:47
one of the same experts and two other economists that was
00:31:50
Emmanuel Saez. And then Gabe Zuckman and Jasper
00:31:54
Jasper Bull put out another paper within a couple months
00:31:58
after that. And that was NBA, our working
00:32:01
paper. And that paper did a couple of
00:32:03
things. So then they they formally kept
00:32:05
Ellison out. That's very strong positive for
00:32:07
the economist there to do that. But then they also they added
00:32:12
about 30 foreign national billionaires who they claim have
00:32:16
residents in the state of California.
00:32:19
And I we have residency issues with the current U.S. citizens
00:32:24
who are trying to leave. I would I would also suggest
00:32:28
caution as an economist to banking foreign national
00:32:31
residency dollars to keep your revenue at 100 billion.
00:32:36
I mean that that's, you know it, that is a that is very generous
00:32:46
to assume that you are going to win all those residency cases,
00:32:49
all of them when someone does. They're arguing that there are
00:32:54
foreign nationals who have residency here in California.
00:32:57
That's who they're counting as people who are going to be part
00:32:59
of this base that they're going to be taxing.
00:33:02
Yeah, they have citizenship or at least foreign national or
00:33:04
citizenship in another dual citizenship, one of those two
00:33:07
that they are not, they're not primarily AUS citizen or if
00:33:10
they're their dual citizen, but they happen to add, they had
00:33:13
residents on January 1st, 2020. Sixth, there's about 2830
00:33:18
something. So it's like they they make
00:33:20
these acknowledgments in their base that, you know, give us,
00:33:24
you know, the point. OK.
00:33:26
You know, Josh, Ben and others at Hoover did this work.
00:33:30
And I'll name the team Mattheus, Greg, Jack.
00:33:33
We had a really good team here. But we're going to find, we're
00:33:36
going to keep finding billionaires to keep this $100
00:33:38
billion constant, $100 billion is a great number to sell.
00:33:43
So yeah, there's that. It's a nice round Number.
00:33:47
It's nice round Number, I'm certain.
00:33:50
I'm certain some individuals like that.
00:33:53
It's a nice round Number. So that's interesting.
00:33:56
And then the third thing they do is they estimate based on a
00:34:04
couple of different factors, but they estimate there's a fraction
00:34:07
of billionaires that aren't on the Forbes list at all.
00:34:10
Because up to this point, we've just both been using the Forbes
00:34:12
list. And they say, I would, if they
00:34:17
don't use this word, this would be my characterization that you
00:34:19
call these phantom billionaires, billionaires that Forbes doesn't
00:34:23
say exist in California, but they are saying they should be
00:34:27
here. And the response to that is if
00:34:31
Forbes doesn't know they're there and you don't know they're
00:34:35
there, how is the Lao or the Department of Revenue or the FTB
00:34:40
and the state of California going to know they're there?
00:34:44
Good luck to whoever's job it is to find those individuals.
00:34:50
It's about it's that's the only generous way I could say that.
00:34:53
They don't formally include those people, but they
00:34:55
conjecture about it. And that's, you know, I mean,
00:34:58
that's fair as an academic exercise, a conjecture.
00:35:01
OK, maybe the Forbes list doesn't include everybody.
00:35:04
It's another to make a public argument that This is Money in
00:35:07
the bank for the state of California if you vote yes.
00:35:11
So then, you know, we, we've been doing a lot of work on just
00:35:15
to just to rigorously beef up our paper and make sure it's
00:35:19
it's appropriate. So we'll do a second update in
00:35:21
the next few weeks here. But yeah, that's the net present
00:35:26
value paper, which is a very it's, it's, it's probably the
00:35:28
most substantial. It's the heavy, it's the
00:35:30
heavyweight champ of the papers that we're putting out, so to
00:35:33
speak, because it really speaks, it's, you're passing a tax for
00:35:37
revenue. Was it going to raise revenue or
00:35:39
not? And then they do make some
00:35:40
acknowledgments. They, they do, I want to give
00:35:43
them a lot of credit. They back up our, about our
00:35:46
estimates on the income taxes paid that I, you know, they
00:35:50
didn't have that in their first extra report.
00:35:52
So I really want to give them a lot of, a lot of credit.
00:35:55
And I actually think they, they've been doing, you know,
00:35:58
there's a lot of work involved here.
00:36:00
It's not easy to write papers on the fly for a public policy
00:36:03
relevant perspective. So I want to give them, I want
00:36:06
to give them their due as well. But there's there's clear
00:36:09
disagreements in methodology and estimation between the two
00:36:14
proponents in in our report. That's interesting that they
00:36:19
took the rosiest picture they could find of the amount of
00:36:22
billionaires and kind of just reached out to find as many
00:36:24
billionaires tenuously connected to California to come up with
00:36:30
this number. So it's almost like does you
00:36:33
know, their their number is almost inflated based on this is
00:36:37
not academic, but it's my opinion that it seems inflated
00:36:40
because you're not looking at the actual amount of
00:36:43
billionaires who are here. You're looking at tenuously all
00:36:45
billionaires who are somehow tangentially connected to
00:36:49
California. And maybe we'll make the
00:36:50
argument that they are. Who cares at this point?
00:36:53
It's just about putting out a nice round big number like 100
00:36:57
billion so that people actually vote for it.
00:36:59
Does that sound, I mean, you can tell me, am I just being
00:37:04
facetious or is this sort of how that paper kind of went is that
00:37:08
they were trying to beef up their their own argument that
00:37:11
it's so much money that's going to be coming in?
00:37:15
Well, when they removed Ellison from the base and then still
00:37:19
ended up with 100 billion, that is interest.
00:37:22
When they remove one of the top five, depending on the day, you
00:37:26
can track it in the top five wealthiest individuals in the
00:37:29
world and they still ended up at 100 billion.
00:37:34
That's that's strains. I guess credulity is the right
00:37:38
word then. I'll leave that there.
00:37:45
There is another thing that comes up with this, this
00:37:47
billionaire's tax, and I don't know if you've looked into it as
00:37:51
well. I'm sure you've tackled with
00:37:52
this enough. Is the hidden stipulation, I
00:38:00
guess you know, the, the, the hidden clause that's buried deep
00:38:02
within like page 25 of this proposed tax measure that allows
00:38:08
the legislature to change the number of what they determine is
00:38:14
a billionaire or whatever the wealth brackets going to be that
00:38:16
they're going to tax and that they can just continue to do
00:38:20
this in perpetuity. Do you have an opinion on that?
00:38:24
I don't know if you include that in your study or if you just
00:38:26
have an opinion on that in terms of this isn't just a one time
00:38:30
tax. This is You're codifying a tax
00:38:34
forever and ever for the Legislature.
00:38:36
That's right. So the we had that wasn't in the
00:38:39
1st paper, but we've had it in a follow up post on some step
00:38:42
called the commitment problem at the heart of the billionaire Tax
00:38:45
Act, right. And this is and similar to the
00:38:48
economist you talked about, this is a Buchanan atolic commitment
00:38:51
problem that the state commits, you know, the state commits to a
00:38:55
future regime via law, whatever that regime is.
00:38:59
And that could be, you know, constitution be a primary
00:39:01
example of that, right? You commit to some set of rules
00:39:05
and you operate within those rules, you know, ex ante, ex
00:39:07
post. Well, so the state of California
00:39:10
has committed to capping its tax on intangible property and by
00:39:14
extension, you know, all net net assets.
00:39:18
It's in the state constitution already.
00:39:20
It you know, where we have all agreed with our our friends who
00:39:24
are tax attorney etcetera, is that this proposal will lift
00:39:27
that cap. It will lift the state
00:39:29
constitutional cap and it's not clear whether it automatically
00:39:34
goes back in because there's also there's no sunsets or no
00:39:38
reenactment provision to the lifting right.
00:39:42
And then to to get into your point, whether the legislature
00:39:46
will, can or does is, is interrelated, but also
00:39:50
independent of the fact that the state of California, if this
00:39:54
passes and potentially even now already that it they put it on
00:39:57
the ballot, can no longer credibly commit to not taxing
00:40:00
that assets in the future. And that changes the return to
00:40:05
assets in the state of California in expectation.
00:40:08
All right, that's it may already be baked in.
00:40:11
We can argue it'll only be baked in whether it passes or not.
00:40:15
But if it's, you know, if this gets 40% of the vote and you're
00:40:18
a billionaire, you're going to wait until it's 50, you know,
00:40:24
and you know, some people have said the quiet part out loud.
00:40:27
There's a lot of non net tax paying residents, we'll call
00:40:32
residents loosely moving to the state of California when those
00:40:35
are the people moving. That's an interesting, that's an
00:40:39
interesting choice for political economy if you are a net
00:40:42
contributor here. We have a paper coming out of
00:40:46
National Tax Journal in the in the spring on net taxes, net
00:40:50
revenue and migration state of California.
00:40:52
Josh and I have it posted as a working paper now, but it's the
00:40:56
higher brackets that have really been leaving.
00:40:59
Yeah, I mean, even even the middle brackets, but it's really
00:41:02
that you got a little more mobile.
00:41:04
Yeah, you can go go anyways. Yeah, so.
00:41:10
I want to get into, we've talked about your study, we've talked
00:41:14
about the formulas and all this. Let's get into this sort of the
00:41:21
generalities because we were talking before we hopped on and
00:41:24
I was getting your opinion. We are scaring in California.
00:41:30
We are scaring away those who pay about 40% of our tax
00:41:35
revenue. We are creating a welfare state
00:41:38
that is creating more people who are dependent on the state.
00:41:43
You're creating this whole class of people who are waiting for
00:41:47
the state to give them more money.
00:41:48
The people who are funding those welfare programs are leaving.
00:41:53
We can get into who's going to end up paying once the
00:41:56
billionaires leave. Is this sustainable as an
00:42:01
economy? I mean, we're, we're talking
00:42:03
about we're just ever growing the the size of the state and
00:42:07
the amount of handouts while scaring away the people who are
00:42:12
actually providing and paying for those services.
00:42:15
Is this sustainable? I mean, I know my personal
00:42:18
answer of what it is. I want to hear what your opinion
00:42:20
is. Is this sustainable as an
00:42:22
economist? Well, just some numbers for for
00:42:26
your audience and you've felt since 2019, California State tax
00:42:30
revenues are up 55%, which is incredible, right?
00:42:34
Even adjusting for inflation, however you want to do it, cost
00:42:36
of programs, healthcare inflation, you know you could if
00:42:40
you went to 2019 spending levels, the state of California
00:42:42
would you'd be fine. It's, but instead, at the same,
00:42:46
over the same period of time, the state of California expanded
00:42:49
spending by 68%, right? So between now and 2030, the
00:42:54
state of California is projected to run a $93 billion deficit
00:42:57
over those four years. So, you know, 10 and 20, though,
00:43:01
it's, it's just, that's the way they did, the way they deferred.
00:43:03
But so it's 93 over those four years.
00:43:07
That's not sustainable, right? You're the next governor is
00:43:11
facing a very difficult problem. Good luck to whoever that person
00:43:16
is. The legislature, it's not clear
00:43:19
they have any desire to address these challenges.
00:43:22
So if you if you care about the state of California, you should
00:43:26
care about electing a governor who is focused on tackling that
00:43:31
because it's not sustainable. And and you know, get into the
00:43:34
healthcare cost reductions from the justification for the ACT.
00:43:38
If the state just picks up those costs, they don't go away when
00:43:42
the one time revenue is done. They're still on the books so
00:43:45
that it's not sustainable. I mean, there's so much, there's
00:43:48
so much tax revenue in California.
00:43:51
It's a wonderful state. I just did not just beautiful
00:43:55
weather wise, but such friendly people in general.
00:43:58
And there's a whole innovation culture in the North and there's
00:44:02
a whole relaxed culture in the South.
00:44:05
I just, you know, graphs and public sector programs that are
00:44:11
ever expanding at an exponential rate are, are, are driving down
00:44:17
the benefit of being there. And you know, at some point, as
00:44:21
you said, Phil, someone's paying the bill and that migration is
00:44:25
real. States are competing for well
00:44:28
off taxpayers if they can, and California is not winning that
00:44:32
competition right now. Well, that's why I think Gavin
00:44:36
Newsom's talking out of both sides of his mouth, because on
00:44:39
one hand, he's trying to support a billionaire's tax nationally
00:44:45
because he doesn't want billionaires to leave his own
00:44:48
state. So he's trying to appease the
00:44:52
democratic socialist wing of the Democratic Party.
00:44:56
But he doesn't want to do it here because he understands that
00:45:00
if it passes here, it's going to scare all the billionaires away
00:45:04
and that's going to be the revenue.
00:45:05
So it's interesting that he, he under even Gavin Newsom
00:45:09
acknowledges that if you implement it just here in
00:45:12
California, OK, well, they'll just move, they just move to
00:45:16
Texas, Florida, Arizona, like they don't care.
00:45:19
They'll just move to wherever they need to to avoid this and
00:45:23
not pay the taxes. So that's why he supports a
00:45:26
national. And it's, it's kind of again, I
00:45:32
keep going back to this idea that's an idealistic proposition
00:45:35
because they're saying, well, we just need it this one time.
00:45:39
This one time. If we do 5% and we tax
00:45:42
billionaires, then everything will be great.
00:45:46
We'll all have healthcare or the schools will be great, education
00:45:48
will be fantastic. But to your point, this doesn't
00:45:53
go away in taxing one time at 5% is not gonna all of a sudden
00:46:00
solve in perpetuity all of these issues that we're overspending
00:46:04
on and that this state continues to get more and more bloated on
00:46:08
and more and more bureaucracy. So it it's incoming that they're
00:46:11
gonna find ways to continue to. This is not a one time thing.
00:46:16
Would you agree with that? Like, this is not a one time
00:46:18
thing. This is a pie in the sky, kind
00:46:20
of. Yeah, we'll sell it as a one
00:46:21
time thing, pay your fair share, but it's not a one time.
00:46:25
In expectation, I would not bet on it being a one time tax.
00:46:30
And why, and this is important, just quickly, the proponents are
00:46:35
selling this to backfill the healthcare reductions from one
00:46:37
big beautiful bill. What were those reductions?
00:46:39
They're about 156 billion to the state over 10 years, about 15
00:46:43
billion a year. What are those?
00:46:45
So 2/3 of those have to do with the state taking on anyone who's
00:46:50
not eligible for anyone who doesn't meet the eligibility
00:46:52
requirements of one big beautiful bill.
00:46:54
What is that? That is, if an individual, able
00:46:57
bodied individual doesn't want to work, volunteer, go to school
00:47:00
for 20 hours a week, 80 hours a month, you know, then they're no
00:47:04
longer eligible for this, this benefit.
00:47:06
That's 2/3 of the reduction. That's a policy choice for the
00:47:09
state. Should the state take on able
00:47:11
bodied individuals who don't want to meet a work requirement.
00:47:15
That's like .1. Then .2 is the provider tax
00:47:18
limitation. So what is provider?
00:47:19
Provider taxes? That's when the state of
00:47:22
California levies a tax on healthcare providers.
00:47:26
The healthcare provider pays the tax.
00:47:27
They use that tax revenue. The state of California use that
00:47:31
tax revenue to then spend money on healthcare and draw down
00:47:35
federal matching funds. So it's a way to draw down money
00:47:40
from the federal government, which this was highlight this
00:47:42
scheme to the extent that California was doing it.
00:47:44
A lot of states do it. 49 states have provider tax, but the way
00:47:49
California was doing it was even highlighted by the Biden
00:47:51
administration as you know, grossly, you know, an issue of
00:47:55
of of a gross misuse of equality, etcetera, or the fund
00:48:00
the way the tax was set up. So Biden administration flagged
00:48:03
it. So that's what the money's going
00:48:05
to. It's to this limits on provider
00:48:08
taxes and able by individuals, this policy choice for the
00:48:13
state, this really, you know, importance the question, right,
00:48:18
Do I believe it's one time? Well, eventually if the state,
00:48:21
if they vote yes and they're going to take on these able
00:48:24
bodied individuals, the revenue is going to run out by our own
00:48:27
projections by 2029. What's going to happen in 2029?
00:48:31
We've created a dependency. Well, we're going to repeat it
00:48:35
or you're going to repeat something.
00:48:37
There's nothing. You know, that's where I would
00:48:40
just say, OK, if you really believe it's one time, then you
00:48:43
need to tell me what's going to happen in 2029.
00:48:45
And if they say well, it's going to last longer than that, I
00:48:47
would go, OK, pick your year, right.
00:48:50
You know, Prop 30, they're trying to extend it permanently
00:48:53
right now on the ballot as well. That was the income tax
00:48:57
surcharge. So if anyone who who really
00:49:00
believes it's one time you that you should be able to defend
00:49:02
what happens when the one time revenue runs out.
00:49:05
And if they don't have a good answer for that, that should be
00:49:07
your answer. Yeah, I in 2029 is not that far
00:49:13
off. It's creating a fiscal ticking
00:49:15
time bomb for the state, which is someone's going to have to
00:49:18
handle it wherever the next governor in the next
00:49:20
legislature. It's kind of like they just
00:49:21
kicked the can down the road because it sounds great now and
00:49:25
people love to win elections on stuff that makes them feel good
00:49:29
now, but then someone eventually has to pay for it.
00:49:33
We're coming up on the hour. I have a couple more questions
00:49:36
before we let you go because you're tuning in from the East
00:49:39
Coast, so I don't want to keep you up all night into Wednesday
00:49:42
morning. And thank you for staying up
00:49:45
late for us and explaining all of this to us.
00:49:47
This is really enlightening. So worst case scenario, Prop 40
00:49:53
does pass as written. What's your, what is, what are
00:49:57
you envisioning practically happens for the state budget and
00:50:01
healthcare programs that's supposed to fund in this first
00:50:04
year? What do you think's going to
00:50:05
happen or just in general, what do you think's going to happen
00:50:07
after if if it gets passed? I'm not knock on wood, OK, you
00:50:12
know, just let's throw out the worst case scenario.
00:50:15
If it gets passed, I won't dig into the lawsuits or any of
00:50:18
these other things. I think it will take several 2,
00:50:23
you know, two to three years to actually collect the 40 billion
00:50:25
we estimate. I'll just say that I think it
00:50:28
will take some time to collect it.
00:50:29
They're not just going to have 40 billion in the door on
00:50:32
January 1, 2027. I don't think that's some.
00:50:36
Some billionaires have very liquid assets.
00:50:38
It's easy for them to pay back. Maybe all right, but there's a
00:50:41
lot of business equity that's going to be difficult.
00:50:44
OK, that's point 1.2. OK, there's 40 billion, let's
00:50:48
say over the next three years to collect the 40 billion.
00:50:51
The healthcare costs don't really start kicking until 2032.
00:50:57
Thirds of the reductions from one big beautiful bill happen
00:50:59
after that. So you know what's going to
00:51:05
happen immediately? Not much.
00:51:07
The state's going to pick up people who don't want to meet a
00:51:09
work requirement that the federal government is requiring
00:51:13
them to do. And, and they're going to let
00:51:17
the state, you know, the state's going to continue to get revenue
00:51:20
from, for, for rather than from this provider tax scheme, but
00:51:23
from this act. But the the provider tax
00:51:27
limitations really ratchet up starting in the 20 thirties.
00:51:32
So it in some ways right away I would say not much happens.
00:51:37
You know, it's a death by a long right.
00:51:39
So funding wise, that much is going to happen.
00:51:42
But in the long run, it's it's where I think the state should
00:51:45
be concerned about attracting owners of capital.
00:51:50
Should you if you're a billionaire, why stay and why
00:51:53
keep your firm there? And that's a long run question.
00:51:56
Or you could be a billionaire. And that's where right.
00:52:00
We have a, we had a brief, you know, piece out on, you know,
00:52:04
anchor firms. So thinking like your top tech
00:52:06
firms in California, you know, if they could hire here or in
00:52:10
Texas. An example, just we estimated
00:52:13
200, you know, almost a quarter million jobs since 2015 have
00:52:16
gone to anchor firm, other offices outside of California.
00:52:20
And this is, you know, I would imagine that trend accelerates
00:52:24
potentially if founders and we have very wealthy individuals
00:52:28
leave. Yeah.
00:52:35
So we have, yeah, it'll be a couple years before we see what
00:52:38
happens. Again, knock on wood.
00:52:40
I think you and I were both in agreeance that I'm confident
00:52:44
this will not pass again. I don't want to put my foot in
00:52:48
it and say it won't pass, but based on our history here in
00:52:53
California, I think there's just a based on local measures that
00:52:57
are happening here and recent state measures, seems like
00:53:01
Californians are just done with taxes and we're done with paying
00:53:04
more and more taxes, especially when we don't really see any
00:53:06
return for it. All right, last question
00:53:10
tonight. Sum this up for us.
00:53:14
If you're a Californian who isn't a billionaire and probably
00:53:18
never will be, why should this measure matter to you?
00:53:24
Either way, why should you pay attention to this?
00:53:28
Yeah, I I think it has to do with the I'm.
00:53:31
I'm going to pick up from the last answer.
00:53:32
You should care about your state wanting to compete with the
00:53:37
other 50 in terms of attracting talent and attracting
00:53:41
businesses. California already doesn't rank
00:53:43
well, and you should think carefully about adding a reason
00:53:47
for it to rank worse than it currently ranks the the Silicon
00:53:51
Valley, the innovation culture, a lot of the revenue from the
00:53:54
tech firms. The golden goose doesn't have to
00:53:57
stay in California in the long run, right?
00:54:01
And it's about signaling that California is open for business,
00:54:05
that it's not going to confiscate the assets of
00:54:09
individuals. And you could argue via the
00:54:11
ballot box, you know, you're violating, to some extent,
00:54:16
individual's property rights, like a fundamental thing.
00:54:24
You know, taxes are part of, you know, the price you pay for
00:54:28
civil societies at Oscar Wilde. That's all true.
00:54:33
If someone was going, if the tax would also apply to you, would
00:54:36
you vote yes? Right.
00:54:39
And that's a way to think about it.
00:54:41
Would I, You know, maybe there are some situations, you know,
00:54:45
let's say it's World War 2, whatever that you could go then
00:54:49
we, you know, we levy a tax, you got to pay 5% of your, your net
00:54:52
worth one time and you're going to, you assess it in that.
00:54:55
I would argue you should try and assess it in that way.
00:54:58
You know what's fair. You know, you should think about
00:55:01
what's fair if it's applied to you, if you're going to apply it
00:55:03
to somebody else, that's maybe that's an old fashioned
00:55:06
definition of Fair. I, I, I don't think so.
00:55:10
But yeah, you could, if potentially you could pass a
00:55:13
high, you know, a tax rate. I go, yeah, OK, for this
00:55:17
purpose, for this outcome, I'm well, that's why I went into the
00:55:20
provider taxes and the healthcare and able bodied
00:55:22
individuals. What the revenues going for is
00:55:24
important. And the state, the state already
00:55:27
has a spending problem is important because it's, you
00:55:30
know, we're going to add more money when they already have a
00:55:32
lot of money. That's true.
00:55:34
The state of California has a lot of money.
00:55:36
So yeah, I think that's what I would think about it.
00:55:39
If if you are pretty, you're pretty waffling about it.
00:55:43
Would you vote yes if it was your 5% of your net worth?
00:55:48
Maybe, you know, you don't have a, a high net worth And so, you
00:55:51
know, through the gamble, but maybe you should also think
00:55:53
about an expectation. Do you want to impact the way
00:55:58
that others you the state broadly as a place to do
00:56:01
business because you are you are you are casting a vote on that
00:56:05
either way. Yeah, that's that's, that's
00:56:10
fine. No, I that last line is a great
00:56:14
way to put it. You're casting a vote on how
00:56:17
this state is friendly to business or not friendly to
00:56:20
business. Ben, I want to thank you so much
00:56:23
for coming on and explaining all of this to us.
00:56:26
Tell everyone where they can go and find more of your work and
00:56:30
support the Hoover Institution. Yeah, of course.
00:56:33
So you can find all of our work on the profiles for Josh Rao,
00:56:38
Josh Rao, my my primary co-author or or my profile page
00:56:43
on Hoover Institutions websites. You can Google the Hoover
00:56:46
Institution, Google either of our names, find our profile
00:56:49
page. There's different papers are out
00:56:52
now. The net present value of the
00:56:55
millionaire TaxAct and the fiscal assessment of the banner
00:56:59
TaxAct. That's the assessment on
00:57:01
medical, that's the spending. And then we have a sub stack
00:57:06
called Fiscal Reality Check. That said Josh Rao and I have
00:57:11
been publishing in there and Liberty Lens is another sub
00:57:15
stack that we've we've been posting about this in.
00:57:18
So yeah, any of those, any of those locations are great.
00:57:22
Awesome, I'm going to have to go check those sub stacks out.
00:57:24
I didn't know you guys had sub stacks and now I'm going to go
00:57:27
subscribe to them. Thank you again, Ben.
00:57:30
We're going to have to have you on when there's other economic
00:57:32
issues. If you're up for it regarding
00:57:34
California, always nice to have an economist on who can tell us
00:57:38
the facts in the data rather than just me pontificating or
00:57:42
opining about the economy and whining about it here in
00:57:44
California. All right, to everyone who tuned
00:57:48
in live, thank you so much for tuning in for the chat.
00:57:50
Make sure you like, share, subscribe, review, all of that
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