Roughly 40 percent of California’s personal income tax payments are from just the top ½ of 1 percent. And this handful of taxpayers and much of their tax dollars could easily leave, for reasons explained below.

But first, imagine the consequences of losing that revenue. Take away those taxes and California would suffer the mother of all fiscal crises, one that could dwarf the crisis of ten years ago, when California was in such dire straits that the state was forced to issue IOUs because it ran short of cash—and in which nearly every major bank in the country took just a few days to decide that they would not accept California’s “funny money” for payment.

But today, the potential for such a crisis is even worse as the share of tax payments paid by such a small group has become even more concentrated over time. Recent data show that the top 0.1 percent earn about 2/3 of the income earned by the top ½ of 1 percent. Extrapolating from this statistic suggests that the top 0.1 percent pay about 25 percent of California’s personal income taxes. Just eighteen thousand households overwhelmingly fund a state government that serves forty million people. You don’t need to do the math because it is obvious what the problem is.

But this is even more critical than it appears, because personal income taxes make up nearly 44 percent of the state budget—about $80 billion. The hypothetical of losing tax dollars from those eighteen thousand households that make up the top 1/10 of 1 percent becomes a huge issue for the state.

Make no mistake: the massive amount of state taxes this group pays—approximately $1.2 million in taxes per filing family among the top 1%, and roughly $360,000 each return among the top 12%—will almost surely drop after the present stock market bull market has run its course. This is because, as the stock market has skyrocketed for the previous ten years, capital gains, which are taxed as regular income and most likely at California's highest rate of 13.3 percent, make up a large portion of the taxable income in this category.

Bull markets, on the other hand, do come to a conclusion, and the present one is the longest ever recorded. And the current stock price to current earnings ratio, which is at its second highest level since this statistic was started, is at its second highest level since it was started. A high figure might indicate that stock prices are about to fall. Bull markets are usually followed by a long period of asset value declines (bad markets), during which capital gains are made at a considerably slower rate. This is one of the main reasons why California's tax revenues are always fluctuating in relation to the stock market and the worth of private companies.

A smaller and more unpredictable tax base, along with the conclusion of the longest bull market in history, is bad enough, but California now faces a new challenge. Will the top one-tenth of those one-percenters continue to claim California as their tax domicile? Due to existing tax rates and predictions for even greater taxes in the future, it is less likely now than in the past.

During California's recent economic crisis in 2012, voters adopted a 13.3% marginal tax rate for the wealthiest earnings, which will expire in 2016. But, in the legislature's never-ending drive for revenue, voters made the temporary tax increase permanent, despite continuous commercials that "make millionaires pay their fair share" and "billionaires can afford it." For progressive Californians, the problem with the country's highest tax rate is that it makes the thought of migrating to, say, Florida (home to practically every high-earning PGA golf professional, including former Californian Tiger Woods), where there is no state income tax, all the more appealing.

But there was an unexpected turn of events following the 2012 tax hike. Joshua Rauh of the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Graduate School of Business reports that as much as 60 percent of the expected revenue windfall from higher taxes evaporated, reflecting high-tax payers relocating their main residences to other states and much lower realized incomes from the state’s highest earners in response to the higher tax rate.

Rauh's research demonstrates that, contrary to what politicians and state revenue forecasts assume, high incomes are very sensitive to taxes and make significant adjustments in reaction to increasing tax rates. After all, the difference in taxes between residing in Florida and California is worth more than $1 million a year for somebody like Tiger Woods.

Since the pandemic, economic activity and placement decisions have grown more fluid, but state legislators have failed to recognize this, proposing a 16.8 percent top income tax rate. If such a tax rate were to pass, the state's highest earners would face a total marginal tax rate of roughly 62 percent from federal and state income taxes as well as local sales taxes. Prepare for more "funny money" from California if this happens. A whole deal more. Tiger isn't likely to return to his hometown.

San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large. To put this in perspective, Compton, California, the infamous home of drug gang turf wars, and which today remains more dangerous than 90 percent of all US cities, is almost twice as safe as San Francisco.

Who'd have guessed that San Francisco would have double the crime rate as Compton, which is still a major cocaine trafficking hub? This seeming impossible occurs when local government fails catastrophically on nearly every major metric. Welcome to San Francisco's crime scene, where you'll learn why it's so horrible and why it won't get any better.

It's crucial to remember that evaluating crime data is challenging since certain crimes are concentrated in a few neighborhoods while many others are safe; and some crimes are trivial, such as minor property offenses, while others are horrendous, such as violent crime. However, acknowledging these difficulties with interpretation does not change the fact that San Francisco is a hazardous city. Consider Presidio Heights, which is perhaps the most expensive zip code in the country.

Presidio Heights is the chichi neighborhood that is home to Nancy Pelosi, best-selling novelist Danielle Steele, and several members of the Getty family, who funded some of Governor Gavin Newsom’s private businesses.

How expensive? Well, first check out what $2.5 buys you. That is $2.5 million, of course. As the brokers say, if you don’t know that, then don’t bother them. But we can still be online lookie-loos. Take a gander.

This house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms and is around 1,600 square feet. There is no listing for lot square footage, but given that this two-story property shares external walls with its neighbors (including what looks to be a commercial structure on one side), I'm assuming you'd only have approximately 1,000 square feet of terra firma to work with. Views? At $2.5 million, don't hold your breath for the Golden Gate. When you look out the windows, though, you will notice a lot of your neighbors. Backyard? Don't hold your breath for one. Just be grateful that you get to live in Presidio Heights for $2.5 a month.

And it turns out, while over-the-top wealth can buy you many things, it doesn’t buy a safe neighborhood. The incidence of violent crime is still more than twice as high in Presidio Heights as the US average. It is also high compared to other tony California neighborhoods, such as Montecito, California, part-time home of Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres, where the likelihood of assault and robbery is about one-third as low as in Presidio Heights.

Similarly, while Presidio Heights receives an overall score of “C” for crime from another neighborhood evaluation study, Montecito receives an “A+”, and Bel Air and Pacific Palisades, two of the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles, receive grades of A+ and A-, respectively. 

San Francisco's unacceptably high crime rate is ostensibly a result of the city's decision, which is all the more astonishing given that the city spends approximately $14,000 per San Franciscan per year on government services, or 40% more than New York City's extravagant budget.

One significant flaw is a police force that is far too small. New York has roughly twice the number of police officers per capita as San Francisco, and it is a far safer city. Another significant flaw is a sour relationship between the police and the city's district attorney, Chesa Boudin, a progressive prosecutor who some believe still has the attitude of his days as a public defense in San Francisco. Boudin is significant because he is the son of a mother and father who were both convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of two police officers during a Brinks truck heist 40 years ago.

This didn’t get Boudin and the police off to the best start, and their relationship has gone further south, with Boudin criticizing police for not clearing more crimes. Boudin himself has been widely criticized for failing to prosecute obvious cases, including a person who had been arrested multiple times over the previous year, who had a history of felony convictions, and who ultimately killed two women while driving a stolen car after drinking and using methamphetamine.

Boudin chose not to prosecute, and forwarded the case to the parole department. The charges? Two counts of voluntary manslaughter, possession of a stolen vehicle, leaving the scene of an accident, burglary, driving while under the influence of alcohol and drugs, driving while addicted to drugs, possessing a gun and a large-capacity ammunition magazine, and violating the terms of parole. He had also been arrested just prior to the crash on charges including possession of methamphetamine and car theft.

Boudin defended his decision by indicating that the parole department would have a much better chance at stopping the cycle of crime for these types of individuals: “We evaluated the facts, the strength of the case and the charges, and decided it was more likely that he would be held accountable through parole.”

Even after the two ladies were killed, Boudin refused to admit that he had made a mistake by not prosecuting the driver. Instead, he concentrated on reforming the parole system to guarantee that convicts were given the "supervision and structure" they need. Really? I'm curious how the relatives of the two victims that were killed felt about this.

It's also worth noting that there was a drug problem involved, which is the 800-pound elephant in the room. Politicians in San Francisco have opted to embrace drug usage in the city, as well as the violence, mental illness, and homelessness that come with it. And it's not only that drug usage isn't tolerated. Drug usage is aided by giving clean needles to users, resulting in old hypodermic needles being discarded all over the place, and by enabling numerous neighborhoods to function as de facto open-air drug marketplaces. And drug users and dealers have flocked to San Francisco, primarily because they believe their activities are legal.

In the city, there are currently much more drug users than high school pupils. Approximately 1,000 addicts will die this year as a result of an overdose, and more than 1,000 new users will almost probably replace them. Unfortunately, none of this will change unless San Franciscans demand it. I'm not sure when it will happen if it hasn't already.

Nearly 1,000 Californians—experts in math instruction and math application—have signed an open letter that shows why the diversity math curriculum proposed by the California Department of Education (CDE) could devastate learning for the state’s 6 million kids in public K–12 schools.

The opening paragraph of the letter summarizes the signatories’ opinion:

“For all the rhetoric in this framework about equity, social justice, environmental care and culturally appropriate pedagogy, there is no realistic hope for a more fair, just, equal and well-stewarded society if our schools uproot long-proven, reliable and highly effective math methods and instead try to build a mathless Brave New World on a foundation of unsound ideology.”

Signatories range from distinguished math, computer science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and life science professors in the UC and Cal State university systems to K–12 schoolteachers, venture capitalists, and business executives in STEM fields who create so many of our technological advances that are founded on mathematics principles. These advances are the main reason why US worker compensation, worker productivity, and our standard of living have all increased by about a factor of 5 since World War II.  

However, the CDE is largely dismissing the opinions of those whose agenda is to improve student math learning outcomes and who have devoted their lives to advancing this goal. Why are they dismissive? Some will say that those signing this letter want to preserve a failing, racist curriculum that was designed for elite, White male success.

But for the growing number who believe that math instruction is racist, that there is no single right answer in math, and that providing accelerated math classes for highly gifted children should be eliminated, including dispensing with the term “gifted,” check out the signatories of the letter.

All elitist WASPs? Hardly. You will find men and women who hail from around the world. Just among those signatories whose last name begins with the letter “A,” you will find scholars originally from Nigeria, Russia, Italy, India, and Iran. You will find some of the most gifted scientific minds, people who have advised the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society—the list goes on. They come from countries that represent a remarkable diversity of religions, ranging from Hindu and Islam to Judaism and Buddhism. You will find women who indicate on their websites that their life passion is to teach math. And this is just among those whose last name begins with the letter “A.”

Mathematics is the international language of science. Math instruction was not created to give a step up to White elitist males who were on their way to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. The view that mathematics pedagogy is racist is an insult to all those non-Whites and non-Westerners who have successfully trained generations of students, who have mentored new PhD mathematicians, and whose research findings underlie some of the most important technological advances. And California scholars are not alone. One UC Irvine mathematician, along with math professors from NYU and Princeton, wrote:

“Ill-conceived [diversity, equity and inclusion] policies, often informed by CRT [Critical Race Theory), and the declining standards of K–12 math education feed each other in a vicious circle, which is in time going to affect the entire mathematics profession and, more broadly, all STEM disciplines.”

California is failing to teach math anywhere close to adequately. Just 15% of Hispanic kids and 10% of Black kids test at a proficient or higher level. And even if you do think that math education is culturally, socially, or racially biased, it is a real stretch to believe that failure rates of 80 and 85 percent are largely due to race. After all, Asian American students by far are the highest math achievers in California schools, and kids from Shanghai, China, test a full two grade levels above students in Massachusetts, our highest-performing state in math. And kids from China are taught using traditional math.

But California’s education department is sadly not internalizing these facts. Instead, they are expecting less of students. In California’s new curriculum, fourth-grade students are still figuring out how to do addition and subtraction.

By sixth grade, students are still working on fractions, and the instructional document focuses several pages on how a group of three students, one of whom is “linguistically diverse” and another who has “strong visual skills” struggle with the idea that 1/3 is smaller than ½. Meanwhile, Shanghai students are working on the principles of geometry in fourth grade. And when I went to a public school in Los Angeles, we were practicing multiplication in the third grade.

But that was then, and this is now. Today, the CDE is also expecting less from those teaching math, many of whom are simply not trained adequately in mathematics pedagogy, and who would be more comfortable talking about diversity, social justice, and antiracist thought than explaining how a prism works or why snowflakes are symmetrical.

The document warns that upper elementary students may well struggle with understanding the implications of the size of the numerator and denominator. In the sixth grade? Really? How many sixth-grade Shanghai students do you think struggle with this issue? At what age did you not understand that each piece of a pie cut into three pieces was smaller than a piece of a pie that was cut in half?

As a California teacher, it is heartbreaking to find that our K–12 educational leadership has so little faith in the ability of our kids to learn. Could it be perhaps, just maybe, that much of the problem lies not with race or diversity or social justice but with the fact that we need to be fundamentally better teachers of math? That we should look in the mirror and see that the problem is us?

The solution? Hire many more qualified math teachers. Those who can explain how a prism works and why snowflakes are symmetrical. Because understanding the beauty of our mathematical world is what captures the imagination of all students, and teaching math at that level requires those who deeply understand mathematics.

The answer is right in front of us. In a school budget that averages over $20,000 per pupil, which is about $500,000 per classroom annually, we should demand that this be done. The money is there. Let’s not fail our kids any longer.