Kerby Anderson

The finance minister for Louis XIV once explained that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.” Unfortunately, many liberal politicians don’t seem to know where the line is between plucking the Golden Goose and killing the Golden Goose. That is certainly true of political leaders in Seattle and San Francisco.

Two years ago, I wrote how liberals were sleepless in Seattle. There is little rest for progressives who want to invent other ways to extract more gold from the Golden Goose. The city council approved a “head tax” on companies that made over $20 million a year.

It’s not hard to guess how some of the companies around Seattle would respond. You may have noticed that Amazon, Boeing, and a number of other businesses began building outside of the state of Washington. Yes, they may still have their headquarters there, but we have seen these companies look for lower tax venues.

I thought of the Seattle example when I read about the decision by the political leaders in San Francisco to pass a “wealth tax” aimed at corporate executives. The supporters call it the “overpaid executive tax.” You have to give them credit for accurately naming it what it is.

The tax is aimed at companies that pay their CEO more than 100 times the median pay of their workforce. In other words, these politicians feel they should decide what companies pay their top executives. We may have some moral questions about the extravagant pay some corporate executives receive, but it makes little sense to use those questions to justify greater taxes.

If the goal is to make a moral statement, perhaps these politicians succeeded. If their goal was to raise more taxes, they will find that it will probably hasten the departure of more businesses from San Francisco.