Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel Says Gavin Newsom's California 'Doesn't Work' From Governance Perspective: 'You Have A Crazy Religion, 'Wokeism' In California And Wahhabism In Saudi Arabia'

California does not appeal to Palantir co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who finds a lot of parallels between the Golden State and Saudi Arabia.

What Happened: Californians have no choice and people at the margins leave the state but it continues to collect more and more revenue, said Thiel while appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast was aired Friday. The income tax rate for the top bracket in California was raised to 14.4% since the start of the year from the 13.33% rate that prevailed for over a decade.

“You get 10% more revenues and 5% of the people leave, you still increase the amount of revenues you’re getting,” Thiel said. “This is sort of the crazy thing about California is, you know, there’s always sort of a right-wing or libertarian critique of California that ‘you know it’s such a ridiculous place, it should just collapse under its own ridiculousness’,” he said.

The venture capitalist defended the state’s fundamentals. He noted that the macroeconomics of the state is good and for a state of 40 million population, it boasts of a GDP of around $4 trillion. This is about the same as that of Germany which has 80 million people or Japan, which has about 125 million people, he said.

“So, there’s some level on which… California as a whole is working even though it doesn’t work from a governance point of view, doesn’t work for a lot of the people who live there,” Thiel said.

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California-Saudi Connection: Thiel said he thinks of California as a kind of Saudi Arabia. “You have a crazy religion – ‘wokeism’ in California and Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, not many people believe it but it distorts everything,” he said. “Wokeism” is a disparaging reference to the promotion of a liberal, progressive ideology and policy as an expression of sensitivity to systemic injustices and prejudices, while “Wahhabism” is a reformist religious movement within Sunni Islam.

In Saudi Arabia, you have oil wells, which pays for everything, and in California, there are big techs, he said. “Then you have a completely bloated inefficient government sector and you have sort of all sorts of distortions in the real estate market where people also make lots of money and sort of the government and real estate are ways you redistribute the oil wealth,” he added.

That said, he conceded that California is pretty stable. Four of the eight or nine companies with market capitalizations over a trillion dollars, namely Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Nvidia Corp., and Broadcom Inc. are based in California, he noted.

Thiel weighed on other options in zero-interest states. “In theory, a lot of stuff happens on a state level but you don’t live in a state, you live in a city…. if you’re somewhat biased towards living in at least a moderately sized city…there are four states where there are no cities Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota, New Hampshire,” Thiel said.

The entrepreneur shrugged off Washington state with Seattle as one where the weather is worst in the country and also said he was not a big fan of Las Vegas in Nevada either.

California is under the governorship of the Democratic Party’s Gavin Newsom. In June, Thiel said he would vote for Trump but would not be contributing to his campaign. Several of his Silicon Valley friends have thrown their weight behind the Republican party and incidentally, Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OHIO) has close ties with Thiel.

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Photo courtesy: Hubert Burda Media