California's Wealth Tax Is a Trial Balloon for National Control

History offers a warning. In France, the wealth tax introduced under President François Mitterrand in 1982 was sold as a temporary levy on the rich. It lasted over thirty years. Capital fled.

Entrepreneurs left. By the time France scrapped it in 2018, an estimated 10,000 millionaires had exited the country, taking jobs and investment with them.

The parallel is not perfect. California is not a sovereign nation, and its billionaires can move to Texas or Florida without renouncing citizenship. But that makes the lesson sharper, not weaker. A state wealth tax does not need to drive people across an ocean to do damage.

It only needs to drive them across a state line.

Supporters argue that billionaires have accumulated unprecedented wealth while public services crumble, and that a one-time tax is a fair way to make them pay their share. That argument collapses on inspection. California already has the highest top income tax rate in the nation. Its budget is larger than most countries'.

The problem is not a shortage of revenue. It is a spending addiction that no tax can satisfy.

The real goal is normalization. If California can seize a slice of private wealth once, it can do it again. Other blue states are already watching. The ballot measure's backers, including socialists, openly describe Prop 40 as a trial for wealth taxes in other states and at the federal level.

This is not a secret. It is the pitch.

The reader who says "this time is different" should consider what has changed about human nature. Wealth is mobile. Governments are hungry. The combination has produced the same result for centuries: capital flees, revenue disappoints, and politicians blame the rich for leaving.

California is about to teach that lesson again.

The rest of America should pay attention before the exam is administered nationwide.