Collectivism vs. Mobility: Why the 21st-Century Wealthy Vote With Their Feet

Published on: June 15, 2026

In 1956 the economist Charles Tiebout proposed a deceptively simple idea: when people can move freely between jurisdictions, they "vote with their feet." They sort themselves toward the places whose mix of taxes and services suits them, and in doing so, they discipline governments the way customers discipline shops. Stay competitive, or watch your residents walk to a rival.

For most of the twentieth century, this was a theory about choosing a suburb. In the twenty-first, it has become a theory about choosing a country. A record 142,000 millionaires relocated internationally in 2025, a figure the Henley & Partners Private Wealth Migration Report projects will rise to 165,000 in 2026. These are not retirees seeking sunshine. Increasingly they are the founders, capital allocators, and family-office principals whose departures move tax bases and businesses, not just personal income.

What is driving the largest peacetime movement of private wealth on record? At its core sits a tension between two organising principles of modern statecraft: collectivism, the impulse to fund shared goods through broad, often rising, taxation of those most able to pay, and mobility, the growing capacity of capital and the people who own it to relocate when the bargain no longer suits them. This article examines that tension honestly, from both sides, and traces what it means for anyone weighing where to put down roots.

The collectivist case, stated fairly

It is easy to caricature the policymaker's position. It deserves better.

Governments raising taxes on high earners are not acting irrationally. They face genuine fiscal pressures, aging populations, healthcare costs, debt service, infrastructure backlogs, and a defensible moral argument that those who have benefited most from a stable, rule-of-law society should contribute most to maintaining it. When the United Kingdom abolished its non-dom regime in 2025, the original projection was that the change could raise billions annually to fund public services. When U.S. states propose millionaire surtaxes, the stated goal is to fund schools, transit, and behavioural health. The premise, that broad prosperity depends on shared investment, and that taxation is how a society pools the means for it, is centuries old and widely held.

There is also a real empirical counter to the "exodus" narrative. As the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center has argued, the number of millionaires who actually leave is usually a small fraction of the total, often well under 1% in any given year, and most people who relocate from high-tax places are not millionaires at all but middle-income households chasing affordability. On this reading, the wealthy "voting with their feet" is more anecdote than avalanche, and designing tax policy around the threat of departure lets a mobile minority hold fiscal policy hostage.

Both of these points are true. They are also incomplete.

The mobility case: why the bargain is breaking

The collectivist model rests on an old assumption: that the tax base stays put. For most of history it did, because leaving was hard. Mobility erodes that assumption, and three things have changed the calculus this century.

Capital became portable. A twentieth-century industrialist's wealth was tied to factories, land, and local relationships. A twenty-first-century fortune is more likely to be equity, intellectual property, and liquid financial assets that can be domiciled almost anywhere with a wire transfer and a holding structure. When the asset can move, the owner gains leverage.

The infrastructure to move matured. A formal industry now exists to facilitate relocation. Investment migration programs, golden visas and citizenship-by-investment schemes, now account for roughly 30% of all high-net-worth relocations worldwide. Nine of the top ten destination countries for millionaire inflows in 2025 operated structured investment-migration programs, and all of the top twenty did. What was once a bespoke act of expatriation is now a product with a price list. Henley & Partners reported a 64% jump in applications in the first quarter of 2025 versus a year earlier.

Jurisdictions started competing openly. When some governments raise the cost of staying, others advertise the benefits of arriving. The result is explicit tax competition: a marketplace of regimes courting the same mobile capital.

This is the crux. Collectivism assumes a captive base. Mobility, scaled up and professionalised, turns the base into a customer, one that can be lost to a competitor.

The 2026 scoreboard: who is winning the customers

The clearest evidence is the migration ledger itself. Below are the projected net flows for 2025 from the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report.

Three features stand out.

First, the United Kingdom topped the outflow list for the first time in the decade Henley has tracked this, surpassing China, the perennial leader. A European country leading the world in millionaire departures is a genuine inflection point, and it followed directly from the closure of its investor visa and the abolition of its non-dom regime. Britain is now under its heaviest tax burden since the 1940s, and an estimated tens of billions in liquid wealth left with the departing millionaires.

Second, the UAE is the runaway destination at +9,800, more than 2,000 ahead of the United States in second place. Its appeal is the mobility case in its purest form: zero personal income tax, zero capital gains tax, zero inheritance tax, and a Golden Visa that processes in weeks rather than years. The Dubai International Financial Centre alone now hosts well over a hundred family offices.

Third, the destinations almost all run investment-migration programs, confirming Tiebout's logic at global scale. Italy attracts inflows partly through a flat-tax regime that exempts foreign income for a fixed annual charge; Portugal, Greece, and Switzerland each pair lifestyle with a structured pathway. These programs are facilitation mechanisms, not the underlying motive, but their existence is what converts a desire to move into an executed move.

The nuance the headlines miss

A serious analysis resists the temptation to declare mobility the simple winner. Two qualifications matter.

Tax is not the only pull factor, and for many, not the main one. Wealth managers consistently report that lower-net-worth millionaires prioritise lifestyle, climate, safety, schools, and language over tax, while only the wealthiest are primarily tax-driven. This is why relatively high-tax countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand still attract significant inflows: they sell stability, space, and quality of life. Mobility responds to the whole bargain a jurisdiction offers, not to the tax line alone. A government can run higher taxes and still win residents if the rest of the package is compelling enough.

Mobility has limits and costs. Establishing genuine residency means real physical presence, severing old ties, navigating exit taxes, and accepting currency and legal risk. Many who explore relocation never complete it. And there is a collective-action problem lurking on the other side: if too many jurisdictions compete purely on lowering taxes, the global tax base for shared goods shrinks for everyone, a "race to the bottom" that even mobility's beneficiaries may not want to win outright.

So the honest framing is not collectivism versus mobility as a fight one side wins. It is a negotiation, conducted at planetary scale, in which mobility has shifted the bargaining power. Governments can still tax, but they can no longer assume the base is captive, and the most successful jurisdictions are those that price their offer (taxes, services, stability, lifestyle, residency terms) as something a global customer would actively choose.

What it means for you

If you hold internationally mobile wealth, or expect to, the takeaways are practical, not ideological.

Treat your jurisdiction as a choice, not a default. The 21st-century reality is that residence is increasingly elective for those with the means. That does not mean you should move; it means the option deserves deliberate analysis rather than inertia.

Weigh the whole bargain. The winning destinations are not simply the lowest-tax ones. They are the ones offering the best combination of tax efficiency, legal security, lifestyle, and a credible residency pathway. A zero-tax jurisdiction with poor schools or thin rule of law may lose to a moderate-tax one that offers stability and a real life.

Mind the friction. International mobility is far harder than the domestic kind. Residency-day rules, tax treaties, exit charges, currency exposure, and the practicalities of property ownership in an unfamiliar legal system all sit between intention and execution. Model them before you commit.

Property is usually the anchor. Almost every relocation, and almost every investment-migration program, runs through real estate, the qualifying purchase, the family home, the store of value. Where you buy, and under what structure, is frequently the decision that makes the rest possible.

Frequently asked questions

How many millionaires are relocating, and is it really growing?

A record 142,000 high-net-worth individuals relocated internationally in 2025, with Henley & Partners projecting 165,000 in 2026. The trend has accelerated for several consecutive years and now sets new records annually.

What does "voting with your feet" mean for the wealthy?

It describes the Tiebout principle: when people can move between jurisdictions, they relocate toward the mix of taxes, services, and lifestyle that suits them, effectively forcing jurisdictions to compete for residents. Mobile capital amplifies this dynamic.

Where are millionaires moving in 2026?

The leading destinations are the UAE (the largest by a wide margin), the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, and Greece, most of which operate structured investment-migration programs.

Is the millionaire exodus overstated?

There is a real debate. The number who actually leave is a small share of the total millionaire population, and most relocations overall are driven by affordability among non-millionaires. The significance lies less in the raw count than in who leaves, founders and capital allocators whose departure carries outsized fiscal and economic weight.

Do high taxes always drive the wealthy away?

No. Tax matters most to the very wealthiest; many millionaires prioritise lifestyle, safety, and stability, which is why higher-tax countries like Canada and Australia still attract strong inflows. Mobility responds to the whole bargain a jurisdiction offers, not to tax alone.

Tiebout's insight was never really about suburbs. It was about what happens to power when people can choose. In 2026, the people with the most choice are exercising it across borders at record scale, not as a political statement, but as a series of practical decisions about where capital, family, and future are best secured.

JanusHermes exists to make that decision a clear one. Compare property markets, residency-linked investments, and the real cost of ownership across 50+ countries, the groundwork beneath every cross-border move, in a single place.

Sources: Henley & Partners Private Wealth Migration Report 2025 (and 2024); New World Wealth; Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center; Tiebout, C. (1956), "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures." Figures are projections and estimates as published.

JanusHermes is the global real estate investment platform for cross-border investors, covering 50+ countries in 11 languages. This content is for information only and is not tax, legal, or investment advice.

A note on the numbers: where no source is named, the market figures in this article (prices, yields, costs) are indicative estimates compiled from publicly available market data and industry reporting at the time of writing. Markets move and rules change, so treat them as a starting point and verify current figures with official sources before acting on them.