If in November’s referendum Californians unwisely enact a wealth tax, they will illustrate two axioms: Wisdom is the anticipation of consequences. And we are punished not for our sins but by them.

The consequences of a one-time (supposedly; see below) 5 percent tax on the net worth of billionaires are already arriving. Some of California’s wealthiest, who constitute a large portion of the state’s precarious fiscal base, are leaving. The richest 1 percent of taxpayers supply about 40 percent of the state’s personal income-tax revenue.

U.S. federalism is 50 permanent incentives for entrepreneurial governance. Capital and talent are mobile; they go where they are welcome, and remain where they are well treated. Wise states compete to be hospitable. Unwise ones, with self-defeating insouciance, ignore federalism’s incentives. They denounce such competition as a “race to the bottom.” The top, as those states define it, is a fantasyland where government can extract as much as it wants from immobile wealth.

Mobility, by the way, is not just between states. Issues & Insights reports that the 2,589 counties where Donald Trump won majorities in each of the past three elections gained 5.4 million people........

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