Fleeing for their futures, a California exodus unleashes a Florida gold rush

California’s self-inflicted economic wounds have reached a fever pitch in 2026. Strapped with record-high gas prices, a staggering $31 billion transit deficit and a radical billionaire wealth tax heading to the ballot this November, the Golden State is witnessing an unprecedented mass migration.It is no longer just a working-class flight; California’s elite are actively being courted by pro-business states, prompting luxury billboards to tell Angelenos they should “move to Miami, where they are not being persecuted for having extreme wealth.”As ultra-high-net-worth buyers permanently sever their West Coast ties, urban affairs and real estate experts warn that the progressive enclave is “careening towards a very, very difficult period,” leaving a hollowed-out middle class left behind to bail out the deficit.“We started to see the outmigration.It was very concentrated among poor, working-class people who were reacting to changes in the economy and prices.

Increasingly, the people leaving are wealthier,” Chapman University professor Joel Kotkin told Fox News Digital.“And that means that they’re taking their tax dollars with them.

So states like Florida and Texas gain enormously from this kind of trade, both from New York and from California in particular.So one of the things it’s going to do is it’s gonna put pressure on the remaining middle class to bail it out.”“The fact that you’re paying more in income tax than you take home yourself on an annual basis is madness to me,” said RIVANI President and founder Robert Rivani, who moved his family and commercial real estate firm from L.A.

to Miami in 2020.“I’d be somewhat OK with even paying that high tax rate if we didn’t have our economy falling apart, if we didn’t have such a massive increase in homelessness, if we [didn’t] have such a mass increase in crime.

You’re paying all this money, but for what?”“It’s really sad,” Douglas Elliman’s Cory Weiss added.“S...