cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7224496
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/16788
Billionaire outrage against a proposed one-time wealth tax on the richest Californians reached a fever pitch in recent days as organizers began the process of gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to get the initiative on the November ballot.
Without providing specifics, billionaire Bay Area investor Chamath Palihapitiya claimed in a social media post that he knows people “with a collective net worth of $500 billion” who “scrambled and left California for good yesterday” to avoid the potential 5% wealth tax, which would apply to billionaires living in California as of January 1, 2026. (The evidence for significant billionaire tax avoidance via physical relocation is virtually nonexistent.)
Palihapitiya characterized the proposed ballot initiative, which is aimed at raising revenue to avert a healthcare crisis spurred by federal Medicaid cuts, as an “asset seizure tax.”
Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who lives in New York, similarly described the proposed tax as “an expropriation of private property.”
The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, meanwhile, published a hostile editorial on Thursday denouncing the proposed tax and mocking its supporters, including Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW).
“Many progressives think of taxation the way teenage boys think about cologne: If some is good, more must be great,” the editorial reads. “California, already reeks of overtaxation, but it’s thinking about trying out its most potent scent yet: a wealth tax. Just a whiff has some of the state’s wealthiest residents fleeing.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that “the firms of two high-profile California investors issued announcements on New Year’s Eve about establishing new offices out of state, without saying anything about the proposed Golden State tax.”
“Tech investor Peter Thiel’s investment firm, Thiel Capital, said it signed a lease in December for office space in Miami,” the newspaper added. “The office will ‘complement Thiel Capital’s existing operations in Los Angeles,’ the company said.”
Supporters say the response from billionaires and other opponents of the proposed tax—including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is helping raise money to fight the initiative—badly misses the mark. According to organizers, most billionaires see larger capital gains increases in months than the amount they would pay if California voters approved the tax.
“Asking those who have benefited most from the economy to contribute more—particularly to stabilize healthcare systems under direct threat—is not radical. It is reasonable,” Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff of SEIU-UHW, told the Journal.
Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed the proposed wealth tax, which proponents say would raise roughly $100 billion in revenue from around 200 California billionaires. Under the proposal, most of the resulting revenue would be allocated to a Billionaire Tax Health Account, while the rest would go toward an account to fund food assistance and education.
A new expert analysis of the proposal, authored by some of those involved in drafting the initiative, argues that the one-time tax is urgent because “decisions at the federal level have put—and will put—California’s healthcare system, education system, and broader economy under severe stress.”
“Asking the handful of wealthiest Californians to contribute less than the annual appreciation on their fortunes to mitigate these crises is a small, reasonable, and administrable request,” the experts write. “And that is all that this ballot measure does.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Let’s put it this way… Executing them all in public still wouldn’t be radical considering the damage they’ve done.
They should be happy that we’re just trying to make them pay a fair share of taxes at this point. It would be easier and more profitable to just eliminate them one at a time with a 10lb hammer
I feel like, by and large, they’ve forgotten that taxation was the agreement we came to instead of the guillotine.
They didn’t forget, they put a bunch of effort into pacifying the population to the point where it can get this bad and we’re still nowhere near bringing out the guillotine. You’re still significantly more likely to be called a monster for even suggesting it than finding someone else who honestly agrees that it’s past due, and that drastic shift from the days of torches and pitchforks was not coincidental - it was intentional.
Perhaps they need a timely reminder.
Just a friendly reminder that billionaires don’t operate like you or I. To them, life is a game and they will say and do anything, at good times or bad, to win as much as possible.
Every time a super rich person clutches their pearls, it’s them trying to be manipulative, they fully understand that their lifestyle isn’t gonna be affected in any significant way.
“If this tax passes we’ll all just leave”
Don’t threaten the working class with a good time, you goddamn billionaire leeches.
Right? They’re hoarding the money in offshore accounts. They really aren’t good for the state.
And go where? If California does it, the EU will be close behind. Good luck have exponential turnover if all the highest GDP counties gang together. Almost like a union, a European union, as it were.
Reverse enclosure: Limit the region that billionaires are comfortable existing to a smaller and smaller area, return the property they leave behind to the commons.
Back when America was “great”, the tax rate for the highest earners never dropped below 70%.
That’s was all an income tax, not a wealth tax. Billionaires avoid income tax by getting paid in assets and then borrowing against those assets.
How DARE you ask me to pay even a fraction of my fair share of taxes! The nerve!
As much a I really want a wealth tax to work, historically it never has. It becomes a massive burden for the tax person to have to assess the value of everything the person owns. On top of that if you add any exclusions for ease, the wealthy dump their wealth into that thing. If they can get a working wealth tax, that will be amazing, but I’m not holding out much hope.
That’s at least partly because the tax department itself is chronically underfunded. In the US the IRS literally avoids auditing really rich people most of the time because it’s too much for their budget. Whereas, they can pick on less wealthy people, who also cannot afford to defend themselves in court.
Sure, but it’s been tried outside of the US and fails there too. Properly funding the IRS would be the first step, then closing loopholes, then maybe a wealth tax.
That makes sense, but I feel like it would be less of a problem for a one-time emergency measure like is being proposed here, because there wouldn’t be much opportunity to rearrange things before it takes effect.
I admittedly didn’t read beyond the headline. If that’s the case, go for it.
How much money do you fucking need you greedy cunts? You’ll still be rich beyond the dreams of avarice even if you had to pay 99%.
