It’s official: The proposed California Billionaire Tax Act, which last week was ++certified++ for November’s election, has a ballot designation—Proposition 40.
“The people of California now have the opportunity to decide what kind of future they want,” Service Employees International Union-United ++HealthcareWorkers++ West (SEIU-UHW) vice president Debru Carthan ++said++ on Thursday.
Who cares tho? Its a bandaid on a gushing wound.
Critics argue that it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California and stall economic growth.
Critics really need to start digging through Bullshit Mountain for a new excuse.
That explains why billionaires have been fleeing NYC ever since Mamdani was elected.
Oh wait, they haven’t.
Critics argue that it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California and stall economic growth.
So fucking what. We’ve been held hostage by these people long enough. Call their bluff. Some might leave, but fuck em. Don’t let the door hit them on the way out.
no let it hit them. i want a rocket powered exploding door to hit them straight in the ass on their way out. or maybe a rocket powered guillotine. either way i want the door to vindictively hit them, deliberately, purposefully, on their way out.
it could drive wealthy residents and investment from California and stall economic growth
Threatening with a good time.
California has far TOO many billionaires, and it’s devastating to the economy at large
They need us. We don’t need them.
“I’ll move my business from a state with 55 million people, good education, and higher quality of life to Wyoming.”
No further explanation needed. A Wyoming joke writes itself.
Or alternatively “every single job in the state is going to move to texas”
The state budget will take a hit (how big is anyone’s guess).
Because a federal tax is the way to do it, and people are tired of waiting.
So. Assuming it passes, and why wouldn’t it - it’s like a prop titled “kick Elon in the nuts”: more money for nurses, less for schools and roads and, ironically, nurses.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I would vote for this if all it did was like money on the ground and burn it. Any dollar they don’t have is a dollar that they’re not screwing me over with inflated asset prices.
What are the advantages of this measure over an actual tax increase? I feel like the state will spend as much money fighting to uphold the measure in court as it would receive. If you’re voting for it, cool. But this issue needs to be addressed at the Federal level.
IMO The only tax should be a wealth tax. If someone wants to spend 100% of what they make and they make billions of dollars, power to them. If they want to live on credit only and never keep a dime, power to them.
If someone wants to rent out a home they own and make money on it and keep the money, they should be taxed on the money they kept AND the value of the home. Wealth hoarding should be extremely discouraged past the lifetime earnings of something like 10x minimum wage. Assuming you work 40 years at 7.25, that’s 6 million dollars. Today that more than affords for a 4 BR home and enough investments to have ~150k passive income from dividend stocks. The market will be especially lucrative for those who are under the asset cap as they can freely buy and sell without being taxed on gains on their way up.
Use it or lose it. There’s no reason for anyone to have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars… let alone billions or trillions or more. If you can’t find ways to spend your wealth in excess of 6 million dollars of assets, maybe you shouldn’t have it.
A 5% tax per year, forever on assets over 6m would still not ever put someone in the poor house. 6.1m doesn’t mean you lose 5% of 6.1m, it means you lose 5% of 0.1m, or 50k. Get taxed down to 6m or lower? No tax. Oh, and we can do all kinds of fun things here to pass wealth down generationally. Money given to kids should be totally protected up to that 6m figure, and it should have to go into a trust that can’t be touched by anyone but the child. A % of taxes paid from a parent should be deposited into all biological children’s trust evenly until they reach that 6m figure. Conversely, kids’ taxes can also go to parents until they reach that 6m number. No more fucking your kids out of their inheritance by living to 100 and no more fucking your parents out of caregiving or tossing them onto public assistance even though you are wildly wealthy.
Want to have more assets for everyone? raise minimum wage. Want more money so you can spend more money? Keep doing stuff that produces value, there’s certainly no shortage of billionaires who have made money from millions, and 5% a year is WAY lower than what people’s wealth accumulates once they get a high income from a source.
I’d also say abolish nonprofits entirely. Organizations can exist, but they need clearly defined ownership and that 5% tax still applies to wealth. a company can become enormous and quite valuable simply by fairly distributing the assets to their employees. Not paying employees a fair share? Well that’s gonna be clawed back… and those taxes should at least partially go to the workers under the tax ceiling.
We should probably also make it so legal agreements cannot be enforced unless they are public. NDAs should practically never be enforceable. Whistleblowing should be incredibly incentivized. No more back room deals. No more loop holes. This needs nuance and much consideration as obviously some exceptions should exist, like all of the above.
Transferring wealth out of the country is probably one example of an income tax that should exist, but clearly some thought and nuance needs to be applied to figure out how to make this work, but it would work.
We could fund all of the necessary social programs with this. We could eliminate homelessness, food insecurity and poverty with this.
All this being said, i’m not naive enough to think this would ever happen. Wealth and power is too concentrated already and democracy doesn’t seem capable of escaping the levers of wealth and power. We’ll keep on hoarding wealth in an extreme minority of people, per usual.
The advantage is this is the one that’s on the ballot. We do not have a tax increase to vote for, we do have this to vote for. And ‘they might fight it’ is a terrible reason to not try.
They won’t “might fight it”. They absolutely will fight it.
Oh no! They’re going to fight it, everyone give up!
Taking any money from billionaires is a worthy cause, because hoarding wealth only lets them convince people it means they can so whatever they want.
Yes thanks for the knee jerk response. My questioning was about whether this is the best strategy to address the wealth hoarding. But sure, let’s do this feel good vote no matter how ineffective it will be…. This is no long term solution, and the “one time only” wording is super suspicious.
Because we benefit from billionaires not being billionaires.
It doesn’t matter if we “get” the money, what matter is them not having it
But this issue needs to be addressed at the Federal level.
Oh really?
Did you get that from Lil Gavy Newsom?
Or from one of the other neoliberals going back past the civil rights movement where they keep waffling between “Incremental change is the only path” and “what are you doing, we cant do something that solves some of the problem incrementally!”
Cuz like…
I really thought everyone could notice by now the one unifying strategy is that you say whatever is happening wont and we should stop trying, yet here you are repeating that same stupid fucking shit that obviously hasn’t worked for generations like it’s a novel fucking idea.
If you legitimately didnt know that shit, that’s fine.
Just understand you talking is fucking us over. And everyone (especially you) would be better off if you read more and typed less.
This measure isn’t “trying”
…
Ok then, tell me when it passes then.
And why people are still going to vote on it and why Newsom is trying to kill it before it passes
Wealth taxes target accumulated wealth. If you’re trying to reduce income inequality that is the only possible measure that will help - aside from the longer term of estate taxes. Taxing income only slows the accumulation - which doesn’t actually matter if someone is already sitting on a mountain of wealth, and like Elon, using it to attack democratic society.
