Billionaire Tax Officially Heads to Nov. 3 Ballot

ssimonpure about 4 hours ago 31 commentsRead Article on sos.ca.gov

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telesilla•about 3 hours ago

Azim Premji donates every dollar he makes over 1 billion for the last 20 years.

Mckenzie Scott is working through donating her share. Same for Melinda Gates, Dustin Moskovitz & Cari Tuna.

Warren Buffet plans to donate the larger part to charity.

Let's keep building the good examples so the alternative (power consolidation across generations) is unthinkable for future generations.

iamkeithmccoy•about 2 hours ago

Good examples are great. But it doesn't solve the problem. The only way to fix this busted economy where inequality is increasing and few, wealthy individuals are gaining insane amounts of political power through spending is systemic change in the structure of our tax base.

nosioptar•about 1 hour ago

I feel like the first dude is a good argument for taxing billionaires. He's still doing alright at what would be a 100% tax over a billion.

telesilla•about 2 hours ago

Agreed. We could posit that the biggest impact a billionaire could have to improve the world would be to lobby for increased taxes.

andrewjf•about 1 hour ago

I mean, let's do it. But it seems more straightforward to tax wealth as capital gains when it's used as collateral for liquid assets (low interest loans, lines of credit, buying twitter).

Bostonian•about 3 hours ago

A "one-time" tax to fund recurring health care and educational expenses is an obvious lie.

0xy•about 3 hours ago

Even if it fails, California has taken a multi billion dollar tax hit from all of the wealth flight as a result of this. Not to mention that those people may take jobs with them, straight to Florida or Texas or other friendlier states.

These taxes are an abject disaster everywhere they're tried. France tried it and it was extremely bad for them.

The cash raised from the tax is dwarfed by the wealth flight, every time.

Napkin math for just the people who have left already over 5 years show $50 billion in lost tax revenue. Probably far more in indirect losses (jobs, consumption, etc).

kridsdale1•about 2 hours ago

You need to remember that the proponents of this kind of thing WANT rich assholes to leave. They consider that an environmental social improvement.

marcinpieczka•35 minutes ago

If you won't do anything about the wealth, the top 1%, or top 0.1% will own more and more, until they own everything. Literally. There is no other outcome possible

vrganj•40 minutes ago

You need to install capital controls first.

AnimalMuppet•35 minutes ago

California is not a country. States cannot install capital controls.

onemoresoop•about 1 hour ago

If you think a few billionaires moving to other states would take the Silicon Valley with them and it would be easy then let's see it play out.

xhkkffbf•about 3 hours ago

All of the wealth has been taxed before, often multiple times. Adding another layer sure seems like overkill.

AnimalMuppet•34 minutes ago

Well, no, it hasn't. Much of the wealth is in the form of unrealized capital gains. It won't be taxed until it becomes a realized capital gain, that is, until the underlying asset is sold.

schacon•about 2 hours ago

Love it.

In fact, we should have expanded it to be a "millionaire tax" where everyone who has a home worth more than $1M needs to pay a one time $50k+ tax to the highly efficient state government. I'm sure they can easily figure out how to sell a small fraction of their home to cover it.

If there is one thing that history has proven, I think it's how valuable dry taxation is for everyone in the long term.

object-a•about 2 hours ago

I mean, people already do pay property taxes on homes? So this isn’t a very good retort.

schacon•about 1 hour ago

In California, it's capped at a knowable amount when you buy the home and pegged at the sale price. You know what it is and what it always will be when the transaction happens. The people whom have owned a house now worth a million for 30 years probably pay a few grand a year and always have. Dry taxing the technical value of their assets today would destroy millions of families. The point is that dry taxation is generally pretty stupid.

object-a•about 1 hour ago

1. The tax is not pegged at the sale price. What prop 13 actually does is limit the amount of appreciation the state can recognize for tax purposes.

2. There are lots of states/cities in the US that do not cap the appreciation of your house for tax purposes, and I don’t think it destroys millions of families. In fact the California cap is generally seen as a terrible policy because it distorts the housing market

georgeburdell•about 1 hour ago

I wouldn’t call it stupid, but it is a policy choice. On the other side, why should Grandma pay 5% of the property taxes as the new couple next door while receiving the same access to public services, while also pushing another family to live farther away?

malcolmgreaves•about 1 hour ago

This is an idiotic take.

The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is basically a billion dollars. At this scale, it’s the same comparison between a billion dollars and a homeless person.

hsnewman•about 3 hours ago

In the USA "all men are created equal". Owning money should allow you more representation than not owning money. Companies/institutions should not be allowed to spend money on politics, and a flat tax would solve this.

nickdurfe•about 2 hours ago

41 of the 56 men who signed the document containing that statement were slave owners.

whateveracct•about 2 hours ago

and yet now the constitution bans slavery

i find the "but the founding fathers had slaves" to just be nihilistic nonsense

the united states was a manifestation of enlightenment philosophy that persists to this day (despite attacks on it)

watwut•30 minutes ago

It took literal war to get there.

nickdurfe•about 2 hours ago

"and yet now the constitution bans slavery"

Unless you're a prisoner convicted of a crime. Stating that the founders of the United States owned slaves is not "nihilistic nonsense", it's an important distinction to note that they sought political power for themselves, and no one else. The phrase "all men are created equal" should be interpreted as "all white land-owning men are created equal"

gaiagraphia•about 1 hour ago

I think I heard that the Carthaginians used to auction off political positions, and the proceeds were effectively the taxes which ran society. While on the surface it sounds like a ridiculous concept, maybe it'd be better if we just cut out all the middlemen. At least policy could be directly connected to the paymasters.

apothegm•about 2 hours ago

> Owning money should allow you more representation than not owning money.

Fine, I’ll bite: Why?

gaiagraphia•about 1 hour ago

The rich are always going to manipulate politics. Maybe it'd be better for them to directly influence politics with their names and votes attached to policies, as opposed to hiding in the shadows and using representatives as fall guys.

Think we'd all be better off if the whole lobbying caste was dismantled and there were simpler paper trails.

Why not let Bezos, Musk et al spend £1bil/year to sit on the senate?

Catloafdev•about 2 hours ago

> Owning money should allow you more representation than not owning money

The capitalist's manifesto