California's Billionaire Tax Would Cost $25 Billion | Josh Rauh

Guest Bio:  Joshua Rauh is the Ormond Family Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution, where he leads the Fiscal Policy Initiative. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research centers on public finance, state and local government pension liabilities, and taxation. From November 2019 to March 2020 he served as Principal Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He has testified before Congress on public pension debt and is best known for his "Hidden Debt, Hidden Deficits" series, which documented the true scale of unfunded pension promises across U.S. states. Find his finance Substack here: https://libertylensecon.substack.com/ **Show Summary** In this episode of *State of Gold*, host Jon Slavet sits down with Stanford economist Josh Rauh to work through the numbers behind California's proposed Billionaire Tax and why Hoover Institution research puts the net fiscal impact at negative $25 billion. Rauh explains how the tax is already accelerating founder departures, how the legislation could be leveraged to sieze assets from any Californian, and what France's failed experiment tells us about what happens next. The conversation shifts to the federal debt, where Rauh makes the case that $40 trillion in accumulated deficits is the single biggest threat facing the American economy: The real reason mortgage rates won't come down, the reason 25 cents of every non Social Security tax dollar now goes straight to interest payments, and why the 1970s stagflation era is the closest historical parallel if Congress doesn't change course. **Chapters** 00:00 – Josh Rauh Joins to talk Billionaire Tax and the Federal Debt 00:54 – The France Parallel: What Macron's Repealed Wealth Tax Proves 02:17 – The $25 Billion Math: Why the Tax Would Lose the State Money 03:36 – Founders Already Fleeing: "Raise the Series B, Then Leave" 04:09 – The Legislature Loophole: One Word From a Millionaire Tax 05:35 – Could This Become a 2028 Democratic Primary Weapon? 07:37 – If It Passes: The Zuckerberg January 1 Cutoff Problem 08:50 – Revenue for the State or Prosperity for the People? 10:00 – Proposition 42, Teachers' Pensions, and MediCal for Undocumented Immigrants 12:59 – Tariffs & Spending: Why They're Not the Biggest Threat 15:28 – The Real Crisis: $40 Trillion in Federal Debt and Your Mortgage Rate 18:07 – Clinton's "Balanced Budget" and the Accounting Fiction 18:55 – Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security: Half the Budget Nobody Will Touch 22:26 – What a Federal Debt Crisis Would Actually Look Like 26:41 – California's IOU Playbook When the Market Corrects 29:22 – Reasons for Optimism in California **Connect with Joshua Rauh** - X: https://x.com/joshrauh - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshua-rauh-01a02017/ - Stanford Website: https://web.stanford.edu/~rauh/about.html - Personal Website: https://www.joshuarauh.com/ Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe to our podcast, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and join the conversation on Instagram and LinkedIn with the hashtag #stateofgoldpodcast **Connect with State of Gold** - X: https://x.com/realjonslavet - Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/stateofgold/about - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stateofgoldpodcast/?hl=en - Website: www.stateofgold.com