About this episode

Cristobal Young discusses the impact of millionaire taxes and the common fear of wealthy individuals leaving due to high taxes.

New York might be next in a growing line of states adopting millionaire taxes — and the same old fear comes with it: tax the rich too hard and they'll leave, taking their businesses and their tax revenue with them. Cristobal Young, an economic sociologist at Cornell, has spent over twenty years testing that fear against actual IRS data, going back to New Jersey's first millionaire tax fight in 2004. His finding, consistently: millionaires barely move at all, and when they do, it's rarely for tax reasons. Jamie talks with Young about why a wealth tax on people like Elon Musk might be worth the administrative headache and why — twenty years in — the deepest driver of where people live still isn't the tax code. For more solutions-oriented thinking on urban life, visit the Vital City website at https://www.vitalcitynyc.org/

People in this episode

Host: Jamie Rubin

Guest: Cristobal Young

Topics covered

• millionaire taxes
• tax policy
• economic sociology
• migration
• urban life

Keywords

• millionaire flight
• tax the rich
• IRS data
• wealth tax
• urban solutions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cornell

Places: New York, New Jersey

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