"Where Have All of Los Angeles's Mega-Rich People Gone?" asks the real estate site Curbed, which reports:
In 2013, Los Angeles had 4,520 mega-rich people, aka ultra high net worth individuals, aka people with more than $30 million in net assets; it had the fifth most mega-rich after New York, London, Tokyo, and San Francisco. Today it has 969 mega-rich people and is ranked twentieth. Where have the mega-rich gone? The numbers come fromKnight Frank's 2015 Wealth Report (via CityLab), which also found that, while Los Angeles was considered one of "the best investment opportunities in 2015" among the mega-rich, it's only the twenty-second "most important" city to these people, tailing Madrid and Milan.
Even the New York Times saw this one coming after federal and state tax increases that went into effect January 1, 2013, put the top marginal income tax rate in California at 51.9%, the highest in the nation. The Times web headline over Adam Nagourney's February 7, 2013 front-page story was "millionaires consider leaving California over taxes." It looks like they did more than "consider" — they left.