If you make it hard to be rich, the rich will just go somewhere else, not abide by your rules.
The wealth redistribution narrative is as dumb as the plot of the "The Purge" franchise. If there's going to be a purge you just travel to a country without purge.
Yes and no. Rich people don't want to live in California simply because of their tax treatment. Rich people don't want to live in London because of the privileges given to bankers. People don't want to live in Vancouver simply because of the real estate market. Rich people want to live in these places because these places are great places in which to live. Weather, politics, safe streets, your wealthy kids not being kidnapped for ransom money, access to ambulance services, clear air/water, not having legions of poor people at your gate every morning, being able to go for a morning jog without bodyguards, not having to bribe the cops every other day ... Rich people care about things beyond lower taxes. Those things are basically the same as everyone else.
Rich people want their bank account to live in offshore tax havens. They don't want to raise children in such places. There is a reason why every Chinese billionaire has property in Vancouver, why every mega celebrity has an apartment in New York and a house in London.
If it's too new or too abstract to be illegal, you will find a California company for it.
The race for technological advancement is not to make the world a better place, it's a race against legislation to find things that are not yet regulated and profit for them for as long as possible.
1. Enter unregulated market
2. Profit as much as possible
3. Use lobby to keep regulation away
4. Once it's so regulated that it's hard to make money from it, find another unregulated thing to do
Examples: Google's Doubleclick fiasco, Uber, Airbnb, Coinbase, etc.
I view that as a net win considering wealth doesn't actually "trickle down" from the wealthy: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trick...
The presence or absence of a billionaire in a given jurisdiction won't be the deciding factor for those industries as evidenced by every other city without tech billionaires that has a thriving restaurant and service industry.
Do you remember when SF passed a dumb tax law and Stripe had to move their office out of town? Then all the office workers had to go too (or go remote), then the completely obvious effect described above happened?
I remember. My friends in the restaurant industry remember.
This is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor.
Did I endorse such system, or simply described reality?
If I tell you right now "your tax rate is now 90%". What will you do?
For people that work for minimum wage, you are ultrarich.
I'll tell you what you'll do: leave the country. And even if you don't, everyone else will.
But governments now are a bit smarter than that. Instead of raising your tax rate they will simply devaluate your money through inflation.
Several Tories decided that not paying taxes was better than sitting in Parliament and so they quit as a result of this.