Two women in large, fancy hats exit the Frederick Law Olmstead Luncheon at the Central Park Conservancy; one walks towards a car with her back to the camera, the other is shown in profile loo
Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis / Getty Images

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.

You can listen to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.


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