Starbucks tycoon Howard Schultz joins the billionaire blue-state exodus

It turns out that even the wokest billionaires are just like you and me — they don’t much like paying taxes, either.  

The latest example is Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, who is reportedly spending some $44 million for a penthouse apartment at the elite Surf Club in Surfside, Fla. Schultz simultaneously announced that he and his wife were leaving their longtime base in Seattle. 

The Schultz family is skipping town just as Democrats in charge of the Evergreen State have rammed through a new tax to make wealthy residents “pay their fair share.” By leaving, the Schultzes will avoid a 9.9 percent “millionaires” tax that Washington’s Democrat governor promises to sign into law.

Schultz is known not only for putting America’s most famous cup of Joe on the map; he’s also made a name for himself dabbling in politics, in 2019 teasing a possible run for the Oval Office. His main goal if he ran? Fixing our country’s income inequality, which had, in his words, gotten “out of control.”

“If I run for president and am fortunate to win, what I can promise you is I will address the issues of inequality in many ways,” Schultz told an interviewer at the time.

One way Schultz planned to fix inequality was by hiking taxes. “The government in Washington and the president of the United States needs to demonstrate to the American people we’re going to raise taxes on the wealthy,” Schultz said in another interview.    

I guess he just didn’t mean the wealthy of Washington state.

Washington’s new tax will apply to income earned in excess of $1 million per year, starting in 2028. Backers of the tax promise, as they always do, that the funds will go to things like health care, schools and free meals for needy children. What Grinch could possibly deny such laudable ambitions?........

© The Hill