Where Wealth Is Moving in America (2023)

soared

Useless data without context. What is the age of the average Florida 2026 transplant? Couldn’t this just be near-retiree boomers moving to Florida, which doesn’t really indicate much? What are these numbers compared to years prior? Do they fluctuate, or are they a continuous trend? How much of the California and Texas numbers are caused by a small number of individuals (the Elon effect)?

pinevale

Yeah, wealth has legs, and we increasingly have this wealth meta-economy where different states are good at producing wealthy people (CA, NY) and different states are good at giving them a hospitable place to live. Sources and sinks. This is probably good in some sense - you can argue that it's not healthy for states like CA to "own" so much of GDP end-to-end - but I wonder where this leads us in a couple of decades. Does it continue to be like this, or does it mean that more tech hubs pop up elsewhere because in the long haul, people probably prefer to work and invest close to home? A big problem is that some of these places - e.g., Wyoming - don't have the higher-ed infrastructure that would foster new startups and high-tech research. On the flip side, California is now importing most of its entrepreneurs anyway.

kens

That chart is extremely confusing because it mixes up income and wealth, which are two different things.

ramesh31

A majority of California's budget problems come from trying to absorb what should be a federally handled expense. Medi-Cal is what Medicaid should be across the board. But they end up in the classic trap for US states, which is to say you have all of the problems of a major country but none of the stickiness to the tax base like one, making it impossible to sustain these things long term.

samstokes

... in 2023. (Thanks to whoever updated the submission title to include a year tag since I wrote this comment.) This is a little misleading as written (with a 2026 timestamp but citing only 2023 data) given there is a wealth tax on the California ballot and wealth migration is cited as a reason to oppose it. This article looks like it supports that argument, but it doesn't.

abecedarius

What stands out to me: the #1 (FL) over 3x the inflow of the #2 (TX). Both are large southern coastal states with no state income tax. What's Florida got that's that much more attractive?

coldtea

> Americans aren’t just moving, they’re bringing billions in wealth with them. (...) These inflows aren’t just large—they’re high-income. AI slop everywhere.

dominotw

my friends in the bay area always say. Its good that bunch of losers are moving out. Really pisses me off.

bluegatty

Make money here but wait until death to have it declared over there is unsustainable, it's a global problem. This is going to sound wild - but hear me out: you pay taxes in equity the moment you get it. 'Shares are income' - so you got 1M shares in a company you made, the tax is, 1/3 or whatever - and then you never pay taxes on cap gains from that again. You might be able to control liquidity, but when it's liquid it goes to the state etc.. That way taxes are captured appropriately and where wealth is created. It just feels extra odd that you incorporate a company and immediatley gov. gets 1/2 or whatever - but that is the case the moment it goes into your pocket as $ anyhow.

hparadiz

There's been this idea going around that a billionaire has to keep owning taxes just for being a billionaire. After they already paid income tax on that money. Consider the idea of income tax. You get paid. You pay tax. The money after that is yours. Billionaires have the same thing. They make a lot early and then "retire" but then people still look at their bank account and want more years later. This idea that a billionaire has no income years later seems unfair to people even though really it makes all the sense in the world. They don't need income anymore. Duh. They already paid all the income taxes on it years prior. So yes they will absolutely leave. And then yes you will have a massive budget hole. And then your taxes will go up because the state got greedy.

paxy

The number by itself is meaningless. There's a massive difference between migration of a million middle-class households and one deca-billionaire changing where his primary home was registered.

kixiQu

This looks like it's capturing how wealth is shifting around from people moving. But how does this net out with changes in wealth / income / whatever from people who stayed put? It'd be very interesting to learn that California was actually contracting, but while this data presentation suggests it, that's not what's actually here....

Projectiboga

I doubt they modeled the net outflows of capital from the retirement zones each year as estates get settled. Though I did see a claim of increasing GDPs in those inbound states.

mywittyname

I think Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are the more interesting states. These are affordable places with solid job opportunities. So I think job migration is more complicated than just cost of living and taxes. Also, it would be interesting to see these absolute figures as a percentage of overall income.

__initbrian__

Would love to see this split by age groups. This feels like it’s showing where retirees are moving