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California ‘billionaire tax’ makes ballot despite opposition from tech moguls
(www.theguardian.com)
One time 5%, that's like a bandaid on a severed artery
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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Tax the ever living fuck out of them like they did pre-Reagan.
Yeah, a 95% marginal tax rate and both a massive inheritance and transfer of assets while alive (not sure how it's called) taxes would solve most of the problem.
(not sure how it's called)
I think you are looking for "wealth tax"
Also the US has inheritance tax that kicks in once an estate exceeds 5million dollars. The problem is that you can bypass that limit by establishing a trust that holds all your assets. If before your death you put everything over 5million in a trust (baisically a legal contract that acts like a container for assets that a lawyer oversees to make sure the contract is executed) then it stops being your wealth and starts being the trust's wealth. A trust can have any arbitrary set of rules, for example it could be as simple as: wisely invest my assets and pay out an income to my surviving decendants from the intrest and their decendants. Or ot could be: while i live pay me out, on my death distribute everything left to charities my children are ungreatful brats and don't get anything. Really it can be anything.
Those are really useful if for example you have 3 unmarried adults who want to share property and make sure property rights transfer between them until everyone is dead then the trust is disolved and the property goes to: favorite niece or something. It can also be useful to allow joint ownership of regulated items that otherwise can't be jointly owned (e.g. machine guns) they are also more powerful than a will if for example you want to make sure your grandkids get college money, or dont get any money until 25, while their parents get nothing and so on... anything you can put on a contract can rule the trusts assets.
So realistically the solution here is to cap how much value can be in a trust, say 5million dollars, and limit how many trusts an individual can be a benneficiary of, lets say 3 trusts at a time.
Thanks for the explanation !
Hell yeah! Let’s make it happen!
taxing inheritence and transfer of assets
Wouldn't happen in CA. As blue as they seem, prop 13 makes them basically a feudal society with actual landed gentry. I'm not making that up.
Gift taxes
It almost looks like it‘s designed to fail. Probably all of those billionaires will be richer by the end of the year this tax comes into effect. Meanwhile the money raised from it won‘t be enough to solve all that many issues. It‘s not really supposed to but billionaires and their outlets will keep telling us how „taxing the rich was tried and failed!!!“ Mark my words.
They would never do that, right ? Right?
I think it sets a precedent
I was going to answer how taxing income instead of assets is more effective because it emphasizes reinvesting and creating jobs. But billionaires shouldnt exist. Its just too much accumulated in one person.
The problem with the "reinvestment" thesis is that the US and certainly not California, aren't some fledgling economies struggling to develop and grow--wealth is so unhealthily concentrated it leads to those with outsized portion of the gains investing in things for the sake of investing rather than actually doing anything good for the economy(let alone nation) long term.
Billionaires have wealth managers and investment teams throwing money at returns regardless of externalities, tax minimization, lobbying...they aren't putting money into anything "real" that anyone on main street or any other street would benefit from.
5% one time seems so poorly thought out it was designed to be voted down by those who want real change (permanent, ongoing), which is anyone not in the 1%
Should be national. Statewide doesn’t make any sense
Everything is statewide when the billionaires own the federal governing apparatus, sadly.
Our only power is local.
Oh no, but the billionaires might leave the state! That would be a shame, not to have them assfucking our politicians. A damn shame.
They would still assfuck your politicians. Elon Musk spent $90 million on a judge race in Wisconsin.
Musk is both mentally ill, how do I say now, mentally handicapped, I"m serious, he is what we would call a fucking retard in my day, I don't use that phrase now though, oh yeah, he's also compromised, blackmailed, and a fucking nazi.
My dude don't blame that fuck on mental illness. Plenty of us crazies ain't Nazis. Plenty of you "sane" folk are.
Every state where, "the money goblins will leave if X!!!" is threatened, that state ends up having more millionaire/billionaires after X happens.
And when they "leave" they don't leave, they buy another vacation home, their business interests stay put.
And of course, wherever they are, they aren't paying taxes. And you are paying their energy /water bills.
You know it. And I do.
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They seem to be moving to the Midwest lately anyway. To states where they can fuck over the environment with their data centers. But if they think they will move the entire business, including employees, there, I’m not so sure that will work out. The local yokels are fucked from decades of poor education, so they don’t have the tech skills. They will have a hard time importing brown people on H1B visas, because everyone in these states is racist as fuck (which is also why they moved there to begin with.) So that leaves US citizens with those skill sets, but they mostly live in blue areas and are not going to want to move to these places that won’t align with their lifestyle. So they’ll still have to have remote employees, or they think they can get rid of most of their employees and replace them all with their AI jizz fest. Which will be funny when it fails.
These motherfuckers are still going to be billionaires after this modest tax.
it isn't going to pass because they are spending millions of dollars on ads opposing it because that will be cheaper than paying taxes.
And stupid people will be like well I saw an ad saying it would affect ME down the road
Remember that proposition about making gig workers employees? So they could get bennies? Yeah. That still sucks.
Lyft and Uber spent like 200 mil on ads, and it worked.
the ads' whole purpose was to confuse people. hell i was confused what yes and no meant on that proposition, and i had ballotpedia and the voting guide open when i was marking my absentee.
I knew exactly what it was and how the vote would go with how many ads were being shoved down everyone's throats. People don't have time to decipher the BS, and those ads definitely did the job.
It's a good start.
You still have that population who believe they'll become millionaires some day if they work hard so 5% is small enough that they might actually vote in favor
This only impacts people with a net worth of at least 1 billion USD.
Id guess those same ppl think they could possibly become a billionaire too. If youre going to be delusional you might as well cross the line into stupidity
I have a family member that lives in LA county. They've unfortunately fallen hard into conservative talking points, and they're fully convinced that if it passes the legislators will change it after the fact to tax everyone in the state.
Why would the billionaires pay 5% when they can spend less then 1% flooding the tvs and mailboxes of Californiana with ads that this will destroy the economy?
Anything less than their severed heads is not enough.
For California's next trick, I'd like to put the abolishment of tech moguls on the ballot.
If this is too extreme, then I'm okay with bringing back "the stocks", so long as we get to throw tomatoes at them.
What you are probably thinking of is actually called a pillory. Stocks attached to your ankles, not the neck and wrists. I suppose they still allowed for the chucking of spoiled produce and eggs.
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How bout we go back to the pre Regan annual 70% wealth tax?