No country for rich men: 6 out of 10 wealthy Americans want to pull a Clooney and pack their bags

George Clooney sent a holiday season warning to the U.S. economy in December 2025: your wealthy citizens aren’t so impressed by all that American Dream stuff anymore. In France, where he and his family had just gotten citizenship, “they kind of don’t give a s— about fame,” he told Esquire. He added that he wanted his kids away from “the culture of Hollywood … walking around worried about paparazzi” or “being compared to somebody else’s famous kids.”​He’s not alone. Six in 10 affluent Americans say they would consider leaving the United States within the next five years — a striking signal of eroding confidence at the very top of the income ladder. That’s the headline finding from a new survey of 1,733 Americans with household incomes above $200,000, conducted in May 2026 by Apex Capital Partners, a wealth management firm that specializes in second citizenship and overseas investment programs. The results paint a picture of a wealthy class increasingly eyeing the exits, not out of hardship, but out of strategic calculation. The finding arrives as the U.S. recorded net negative migration in 2025—more people leaving than arriving—for the first time in roughly 90 years, a trend that aligned exactly with Clooney’s foreign adventures. The Apex survey suggests the wealthy aren’t observers of that shift. They’re driving it. Cost, not just culture wars For years, the narrative around Americans moving abroad centered on political disillusionment. But the data tells a more nuanced story. When asked why they’d consider leaving, respondents ranked cost of living and taxes first, cited by 68% of those open to emigrating—ahead of political climate, which came in at 54%. Healthcare access (39%), public safety (29%), and education (21%) rounded out the top five. “In all honesty, it was a bit surprising to me,” Nuri Katz, founder of Apex Capital Partners, told Fortune. Most of his Americans clients used to