John Sung Kim and the Great Florida Wealth Migration

John Sung Kim grew up in San Francisco, made a fortune selling the tech startup he founded here, then decamped to Florida. Sounds like your typical tunnel vision techie, chasing money, oblivious to the city that made him.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Kim made a concerted, long term effort to save SF before he left it. He got involved in local politics. He created the sanfranciscovoterguide.org website to help voters understand local issues. He was a tireless advocate on Twitter, and in real life, for cleaning up our city, both its sidewalks and its endemic corruption. In the end though, when it was time to start a family, fight gave way to flight, grubby and crime ridden gave way to clean and safe.

But is John’s story an anomaly? To find out, I looked at 2021 IRS migration data, which shows the total income of people who’ve left each US county, versus those who migrated in. I took the net of the in- and out- migration income, then divided this number by each county population to come up with the income gain/loss per person (see the Note at bottom if that’s confusing).

Here are the counties that lost the most income per capita:

I included only counties with over 100k people.

You’ll note that half of these are in the Bay Area, and that two - SF and Manhattan - lost enough net income in 2022 to write every man, woman and child there a check for $10,000.

So, where’s all this money going?

Counties that gained the most wealth per person, 2021.

Yup, it’s mostly the Sunshine State. While you may be unfamiliar with some of these places, they all have significant populations, and thus all the amenities a tech mogul (to say nothing of you and I) might require:

If you look at population instead of wealth, some Texas counties drift into the mix:

Urban counties with the greatest net in-migration of people in 2021.

But the migrants to Texas were less wealthy than those who landed in Florida.

A side note: While the past two years have been the worst in terms of people leaving SF, net migration from here has actually been happening since 2016:

I combined SF and SM counties, since they’re contiguous and have a combined population similar to Santa Clara’s

Couple of weeks ago, I headed down to Florida to see paradise for myself. Actually, I spend time at the beach there every year. There was no crime, no grime, taxes were low, and food quality was high and far cheaper than in the BA. Florida’s easy living - it’s the best place in the US to buy a car, for example.

It was equatorially hot, even in May. And there’s no way Florida can compete with the natural beauty of California beyond its pretty beaches. But its government serves the people, rather than the other way around. Like John Sung Kim, if you look, you may find a spot there among the dunes.

Note on methodology

Here’s an example of how I found the net wealth gain/loss per person:

The IRS reports that 50,327 personal tax returns (1040s) listed an address within SF on 2020 taxes filed in early (usually) 2021, and and address outside SF when they filed their 2021 taxes in 2022. These people had a total Adjusted Gross Income of $12.1B.

Conversely, 30,630 people listed an SF address in 2022, but one outside our city in 2021. They had a combined AGI in 2021 of $4.1B. So we “lost” a net income of $8B. Fewer people moved into the city, and the ones that did were relatively poor. SF had 808k people in 2022, so the loss per capita was about $9,850.