01/29/2026
If you’re middle class in New York City — or anywhere that thinks it’s immune — stop scrolling for a second.
Especially if you still believe earning six figures somehow insulates you.
What’s about to happen in California should scare the hell out of you.
Not politically.
Financially.
And this isn’t theoretical.
I’m already seeing families quietly changing addresses, restructuring assets, and locking in decisions they hoped they’d never have to make — before anything has even passed.
Because they’re not testing this on “the rich.”
They’re testing it on the people who can’t leave.
And I don’t think most people in Manhattan or Brooklyn have really connected how close this already is.
This isn’t a rich person problem. It isn’t about fairness in the abstract.
It’s about who gets locked in when the exits start jamming and nobody wants to admit how people actually behave once real money is on the line.
Everyone should pay taxes. A country doesn’t work otherwise.
That’s not the debate.
What keeps getting skipped is what happens quietly, off camera.
When California started floating a wealth tax last year, nothing had passed yet. No votes. No enforcement. Just drafts, interviews, trial balloons.
And still, the exits started.
It wasn’t loud or dramatic. There were no marches, no televised outrage, nothing that looked like resistance at all.
It was accountants getting calls in the middle of a workday.
Estate attorneys changing paperwork they hadn’t expected to touch.
Families making address decisions they’d sworn — out loud — they would never make.
CFOs asking questions that never show up in press releases.
By the time legislators were still arguing about thresholds and carve-outs, the money was already gone.
That’s the part people miss, because it doesn’t look like resistance.
The wealthy don’t wait for rules to be finalized.
They move when they see where things are heading.
And when they do, the bill doesn’t disappear.
It just changes hands.
And the net gets wider.
If you’re wealthy, you can move capital. You can move a company. You can move your tax residency with a lease, a utility bill, and a couple of signatures.
If you’re middle class, life doesn’t work that way.
You’ve got a kid in PS 87 or Stuyvesant that you fought like hell to get into.
You’ve got parents in Westchester or out on Long Island who now need more than check-in calls.
You’re handcuffed to a 3% mortgage rate that makes moving mathematically impossible — and walking away would mean torching years of careful decisions.
Most people don’t uproot their lives over policy debates.
They absorb the fallout.
Most middle-class families are already doing what they’re supposed to do.
Working. Saving where they can. Paying what they owe. Showing up. Keeping things running.
They’re not scheming.
They’re just living inside the system they were told to trust.
So when people talk about “taxing the rich,” they’re usually picturing someone else.
On paper, that line gets crossed much faster than people expect — especially for the ones who can’t relocate, can’t shelter income, and can’t make problems disappear by leaving.
And no matter how calm the sound bite sounds — no matter how reassuring the new NYC mayor looks at the podium — that isn’t how this actually plays out.
Because when the projections come up short, the state doesn’t cut spending.
It widens the net.
At first it doesn’t feel dramatic. It feels manageable.
You eat out less without announcing it.
You delay a project you’d planned on.
You tell yourself the trip can wait another year.
Nothing about that feels political.
It just feels like home economics.
And that’s why it lasts longer than people think — because by the time it stops feeling temporary, it’s already baked in.
Then the second-order stuff shows up.
Property taxes get reassessed.
Parking permits edge up.
Fees multiply.
Utilities creep higher.
Services thin out while costing more.
Nothing headline-worthy.
Just enough pressure, applied slowly, to change how people live.
France ran this playbook years ago. Same language. Same moral framing. High earners left, the tax base shrank, and the middle class picked up the difference. The policy eventually got scrapped — the damage didn’t.
Now New York City is standing at the same fork in the road.
This isn’t about defending wealth.
And it isn’t about demonizing success.
It’s about being honest about who is left holding the bag when the music stops.
Because when the people who can leave do, the burden doesn’t vanish.
It settles on the people who stay.
The wealthy are already voting with their feet.
The middle class is about to vote with their wallets — whether they want to or not.
The exits are jamming.
It’s time to stop watching the politics
and start doing the math.
