Mark Zuckerberg Threatened to Leave California. Meta's Board Cut Him a Deal

25 pointsposted 6 hours ago
by otterley
(wsj.com)

36 Comments

ppeetteerr

5 hours ago

Tesla’s move to austin had little effect on california. These people also hide their income so it doesn’t risk much in way of taxes.

ssttoo

6 hours ago

I don’t get the threat from folks like Zuckerberg and Brin. First of all these feel like empty posturing. But if they are not, what if they do leave CA? And even if (however unlikely) they take the HQs with them? What does CA lose? It’s not like these folks and companies are paying their share anyway. What am I missing?

jmathai

6 hours ago

If the HQs move then along with them moves the high paying jobs and retail, housing, etc taxes also go. Rank and file employees at Meta can't dodge taxes as efficiently as their CEO.

jansport123

5 hours ago

i 100% doubt, one guy could disrupt the SV ecosystem - they might threaten to leave but they'll come back. The network and culture of SV which made these guys insanely rich is not something a few people moving away can disrupt. The rank and file might move to miami but the talented people will just find other jobs.

jmathai

5 hours ago

Elon moved the Tesla HQ to Austin which employs around 22k people. I'm not sure how much that moves the needle but it's not 0. California is doing just fine but if I were a public servant there then I'd think twice before making sweeping reforms.

tetris11

4 hours ago

On the plus side, the average cost of food, rent, and services might drop

gruez

4 hours ago

"If we crash the economy, everyone will lose their jobs and be poor!"

"On the plus side, the average cost of food, rent, and services might drop"

Arodex

4 hours ago

"If you stop feeding Moloch with kids, the world will end!"

gruez

3 hours ago

But it's not clear where there's a Moloch situation here? The benefits of agglomeration is basically economics 101.

Rebelgecko

5 hours ago

We'll lose their income (and other tax revenue) forever. You can argue that Zuck can/should pay higher taxes, but California's budget is already disproportionately dependent on a relatively small # of people. In practice, scaring them off for a one-off boon feels like a huge own goal (especially the way prop 40 punishes founders with voting shares). And we're losing that permanent revenue that used to go to the general fund for prop 40, which is designed to funnel money to a single industry

estearum

4 hours ago

Land Value Tax solves this

gruez

4 hours ago

As much as I support LVT, how does it have to do with billionaire startup founders? They don't have zero real estate, but they're not exactly real estate moguls either. It's also unclear how tech startups derive their value from land, given that it's presumably all tied up in IP and network effects. Even "datacenters" seem dubious given that the land they sit on is probably dirt cheap, it's the GPUs that's worth money.

estearum

4 hours ago

California’s budget and residential cost problems are both caused by its ridiculous property taxes scheme.

It’s an ultra-high productivity region which naturally drives up land rents, and California has simply opted out of collecting those rents, which then perversely amplifies the land values even further.

The “this” that LVT solves is not “billionaires exist,” it’s “a state can be the most productive place in the world and end up with spiraling COL and revenues ultra-concentrated in just a few individuals.”

zombocomvibes

4 hours ago

Brin is MAGA-aligned now. Dunking on CA is virtue signaling for his tribe.

jjtheblunt

3 hours ago

Is that just ephemeral, in the sense that he'll be whoever-wins aligned in a couple years?

grubbydiff

2 hours ago

Unlikely. MAGA brought on a massive cultural shift helped by Supreme Court and the media. There is no such equivalent on the other side. When you can simply buy elections and other influential apparatus there is no reason to go over to the other side. Any liberal/leftist victories will be temporary and they are simply not as ruthless, undemocratic, and anti-American as MAGA.

snypher

27 minutes ago

Even my neighbor peeled his MAGA stickers off his truck. What is this movement now, just crypto rats, Big Business Bros and associated grifters like Elon? Maybe this is the 'dark MAGA'?

hightrix

3 hours ago

The whole point of taxing wealth is that these leeches are not paying their fair share today. So if Zuck leaves, he’ll just go not pay taxes in another state while using the states resources.

This isn’t a threat. I’d argue many Californians would enthusiastically support this.

tutorialmanager

an hour ago

Isn’t zuck a net positive for whatever state he ends up living in, considering that the portion of the states taxes that he pays far exceeds the portion of the states resources that he uses.

cdrnsf

5 hours ago

Good riddance.

user

3 hours ago

[deleted]

everdrive

5 hours ago

What you might not realize is that except for those living in CA, this is a major threat. We don't want your evil billionaires. Please stay in CA. Ideally, don't even leave the state.

If you know what legislation keeps billionaires away, please let me know.

hyperhello

5 hours ago

Apparently CA just figured that out, or so the billionaires would have us believe at this point.

measurablefunc

6 hours ago

National wealth tax fixes this problem b/c then they'd have to leave the country entirely & there is nowhere they can go.

twoodfin

4 hours ago

A national wealth tax would almost certainly require a Constitutional amendment to survive today’s SCOTUS.

That’s about as DOA as a policy proposal gets.

credit_guy

6 hours ago

The point of this move is that they actually wouldn’t have to leave the country.

roosterIllusi0n

6 hours ago

They would not leave, they cannot leave and still grift. The US's lack of regulations and tax enforcement is how they all get rich.

This is just more fraud by boards controlled by CEOs. The CEO screws up his personal finances despite being a billionaire and now we steal from all existing shareholders to fund the entire tax bill. This is just fraud out in the open. They take tax free bank loans against their stock to avoid selling it and any time they screw this scheme up, boards seem to automatically give them more free stock to fully cover taxes or losses while they keep the tax free loan money. It's insane.

We used to stop this in the 1950s with a 90% federal income tax bracket and post-1929 financial regulations. Republicans cut both over decades and now we are back to the late 1920s waiting for the next great depression to officially start. Everything we did to end the great depression was undone, so we are back to a new great depression.

Finnucane

6 hours ago

"Argentina?"

measurablefunc

6 hours ago

I guess Peter Thiel already has a compound there but I'm not sure if they would all get along.

asdff

4 hours ago

The argentina time share might actually be available while thiel spends time in the $130m bel air mansion he bought last month.

lrvick

5 hours ago

So New Mexico hits Meta with record fins and settlements for knowingly violating privacy rights, and endangering children and for repeatedly lying about it.

Meanwhile in California we are doing anything we can to keep him here even fully knowing he is one of the most evil and hated people on earth. That checks out.