The measure would impose an additional tax on California residents with extreme wealth — we're talking the billionaire class. On the surface, it sounds like a populist slam dunk: make the richest people alive pay their "fair share." Who could object?

Well, anyone who understands how California billionaires actually behave when you point a tax gun at them.

Here's the pattern: Sacramento floats a soak-the-rich scheme, billionaires quietly relocate to Texas, Florida, or Nevada (where, fun fact, there's no state income tax), and the tax revenue projections that were supposed to fund [insert noble cause here] evaporate faster than morning fog in the Mission. Then the state turns around and finds new ways to squeeze the upper-middle class — you know, the people who can't afford to move their entire operation to Austin.

California already has the highest top marginal income tax rate in the nation at 13.3%. We're not exactly going easy on high earners. And yet the state still can't balance a budget, still has a massive deficit, and still manages to spend money like a tech founder on a Series A bender.

The real question isn't whether billionaires should pay more. It's whether California has earned the right to ask anyone to pay more before it demonstrates even a shred of fiscal discipline. We've watched billions vanish into a high-speed rail project that connects nowhere to nowhere. We've seen homelessness spending skyrocket while the crisis deepens. At what point do voters demand accountability before writing another blank check?

Wealth taxes have been tried in Europe — France, Sweden, and others — and most countries abandoned them because they didn't work. Capital fled, revenue fell short, and administrative costs ballooned.

If this measure makes the ballot, voters deserve an honest conversation about what happens after the billionaires leave. Because they will. And the bill will land right where it always does: on everyone else.