California certified a Billionaire Wealth Tax for the November ballot: a 5 percent one-time levy on the state's billionaires, paid over five years, to raise about $20 billion a year for health care, food aid, and schools. We understand the impulse, but the tax will fail because billionaires, unlike land, have feet.

The Center for Land Economics report estimates California's land value at about $8.14 trillion — roughly eight times the billionaire wealth the state can still realistically tax. Los Angeles County's land alone is worth more than the entire billionaire base the wealth tax is chasing. Six California billionaires — Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, Don Hankey, Travis Kalanick, and Steven Spielberg, worth roughly $540 billion combined — had already moved their tax residency out of state before the cutoff. Mark Zuckerberg followed in early 2026.

A land value tax of just 0.25 percent would raise the same $20 billion a year on a base eight times larger that grows with California's economy and cannot move. It can't be dodged by leaving nor passed on to renters, and it captures windfalls the public creates. The burden lands hardest on prime coastal lots and downtown blocks owned by the wealthy, barely touching a working family's house in the Central Valley.