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After moving to California in 1977 with his parents, Peter Thiel believes the time may have come to finally find a new home.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The co-founder of PayPal<\/a> and Facebook\u2019s first\u00a0outside investor<\/a>\u00a0earned his\u00a0estimated $11.6 billion fortune<\/a>\u00a0in Silicon Valley, but revealed he is constantly thinking about setting sail for friendlier waters due to its \u201cconfiscatory taxation\u201d. The state this year introduced a new 14.4% tax on anyone earning over $1 million annually, the highest state income tax in the nation.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t decide whether to leave the state or the country,\u201d Thiel told Joe Rogan on the latest episode of the latter\u2019s hit podcast that dropped on Friday.<\/p>\n While Thiel has been linked both to New Zealand and\u00a0Malta<\/a>, an\u00a0increasingly popular destination<\/a>\u00a0where Thiel filed for citizenship<\/a>, he appears to have resigned himself to remaining in the United States citing greater problems he found abroad (A project to create a sovereign nation in\u00a0international waters<\/a>\u00a0appears to have proverbially suffered a shipwreck).<\/p>\n So Thiel drafted a list of other U.S. destinations based on how much tax he will have to pay before\u00a0whittling them down on the basis of their comparative attractiveness, with Miami emerging as the likely winner.<\/p>\n \u201cI looked at all the zero [income] tax states in the U.S.,\u201d said the Los Angeles resident, who now serves as chairman of data analytics firm Palantir as well as managing partner of the\u00a0Founders Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota and New Hampshire were immediately crossed off due to a lack of any real metropolitan lifestyle. \u201cThey\u2019re zero tax but no cities to speak of,\u201d explained Thiel.<\/p>\n Washington, the only state on the list that levies a tax on capital gains but not income, likewise didn\u2019t make the cut. Counterculture hive Seattle came with the baggage of its rain-drenched weather\u2014the \u201cworst in the country\u201d, according to the investor who has accustomed himself to the warm climate of coastal California since the native\u00a0<\/p>\n Arid Las Vegas in Nevada might have been an option, but Thiel simply said he wasn\u2019t a fan of it and left the matter there.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat leaves three zero-tax states,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas boasts Houston, Austin, and Dallas, Thiel said, but the first of those was just an oil town and the latter suffered from an inferiority complex with Los Angeles and New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n He ruled out Austin\u2014where Rogan now lives\u2014because it is a \u201cwannabe hipster San Francisco town\u201d, which for Thiel is an automatic strike. He left the Bay Area in 2018 due in part to it being the literal mecca of \u201cwokeism\u201d, a worldview he compares with Saudi Arabia\u2019s domestic strain of fundamentalist Islam called Wahhabism.<\/p>\n So all that is left in Thiel\u2019s book is Nashville in Tennessee or Miami, Florida. \u201cThose would be my two top choices,\u201d the billionaire told Rogan.<\/p>\n Thiel sounded as if he was going to land on Miami, where he owns a second home and already spent the previous four winters. The Florida hotspot has recently become one of the fastest-growing cities in the country attracting the likes of Citadel hedge fund founder Ken Griffin and, more recently, Amazon<\/a> founder\u00a0Jeff Bezos<\/a>.<\/p>\n Rogan himself shared his reason for leaving California, which he ascribed to the pandemic-era restrictions on free movement. \u201cAs soon as they started locking things down\u201d in May 2020 the podcaster said he began house shopping in Austin.<\/p>\n After nearly two centuries of a steadily growing state population, California experienced its\u00a0first decline<\/a>\u00a0four years ago during COVID and only staved off an ongoing exodus in\u00a02023<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI always have the fantasy that if enough people leave it will put pressure on them,\u201d remarked Thiel.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSpent the past four winters at his home in Miami<\/h2>\n
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