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Sergey Brin Confronted Gavin Newsom
- mitchbob 5mo agohttps://archive.ph/E0cMc https://archive.ph/E0cMc
- CrimsonRain 5mo agohttps://archive.ph/2026.04.26-181100/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-26/how-google-s-sergey-brin-helped-fuel-a-political-war-in-california https://archive.ph/2026.04.26-181100/https://www.bloomberg.c...
- jiveturkey 5mo agoso much at stake here, such an understated headline. i'm surprised this is bloomberg.
- ece 5mo ago[flagged]
- polski-g 5mo agoThey can leave. And they did.
- ece 5mo agoApparently they didn't go very far.
- cyanydeez 5mo agomost billionaires behave just like users on social media: they want to be on top, collect the most karma, etc. They arn't leaving a platform as large as California because that means diminishing their power and influence and attention.
- add-sub-mul-div 5mo agoThreats to leave for Texas don't survive the realization that then you'd have to live in Texas.
- jbindel 5mo agoExactly. Texas is horrible please stay out. It’s a briar patch. lol
- bdangubic 5mo agoshows you also how “smart” they are to “live” in Cali in the first place. you got billions, park yourself wherever the F you don’t have to pay jacksht for being a billionaire prick and get yourselves on of them houses in Cali to actually live instead of whatever shthole houses billionaires for free
- adjejmxbdjdn 5mo agoExcept what’s stupid is thinking the marginal billions of dollars they may save by not paying CA taxes are worth anything. If you have $5Bn, other than power for power’s sake, it’s very hard to see how the next $100 or $500Bn can actually improve your life and happiness. OTOH, being able to watch a Broadway show that you may have missed because you didn’t live in the same city, or a drive along the ocean while there was a beautiful sunset, would have significantly greater value to the quality of your life.
- bdangubic 5mo agowhen you have this money you can “live” anywhere you want. he can have breakfast in Paris and still make the Broadway show and also get AirBnB for like a year in SF and then also like basically be wherever you want to be regardless of where your “mailing address” is. I have a friend who is 7-digit rich that lives in SF (for the past 8 years) but “lives” in Florida. sounds like our billionaires can’t figure this out so it makes the news (in the middle of about 857 other more important things going on)
- derwiki 5mo ago7-digit rich in SF is essentially any homeowner
- VirusNewbie 5mo agoWealthy people pay the vast majority of taxes in California. Meanwhile, at least 20% of the population are complete freeloaders.
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- csb6 5mo agoI am skeptical billionaires will actually leave their mansions in Malibu or Santa Barbara in any significant numbers just because of higher taxes they can easily afford to pay.
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoOne or two, nothing close to all. It's always an empty threat since time immemorial. Here's a 1936 FDR speech mocking it: "A number of my friends who belong in the very high upper brackets have suggested to me on several occasions of late, that if I am reelected president, they will have to move to some other nation because of high taxes here. Now, I will miss them very much..." (audience breaks into laughter) It's a manipulative tactic by greedy assholes to cow foolish people into accepting their demands of tax evasion to burden ordinary people.
- moneycantbuy 5mo agoendless greed is remarkable. guys with $200B can't afford to pay taxes to the state that allowed them to gain such excessive wealth in the first place, often via government subsidy. this cancerous version of capitalism can't end quickly enough.
- kelseyfrog 5mo agoIf we don't allow them to hold us hostage they will all leave.
- ohNoe5 5mo agoOh no, a couple thousand people, largely engaged in little more than modern conservatism, might leave the rest of us 300+ million alone for a change rather than demand fealty to their personal story and personal autonomy (fealty to which actually distracts us from our own lives); people who do nothing to assure the rest of us have food and shelter and healthcare may take their ball and go home! How tragic. End of the day we all have the same freedom to not care if Sergey has food shelter or lives in his car as the billionaires give themselves End of the day we all have the ssme right to select ourselves and tell Sergey Brin "your needs aren't my problem."
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- VirusNewbie 5mo ago[flagged]
- HaloZero 5mo agoHow did you come up with 50 billion? It’s a 2% one time tax no?
- VirusNewbie 5mo agoNo, Sergey owns non pubic, shares that are not available on the open market that have move voting rights. So the tax 'values' those at the % of voting rights as a percentage of the company valuation. Likewise, Evan Spiegal would have to sell 100% of his SNAP stock the first year because of how the voting rights work.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- clutter55561 5mo agoThat is pretty sad. People would rather spend money on political activism instead of supporting their home state. Imagine if they said instead - no need for tax, here is 15 billion to fund the schools. They could be heroes but choose to be assholes.
- VirusNewbie 5mo ago[flagged]
- clutter55561 5mo agoNot American, buddy, so I don’t have skin in the game. But it looks extremely bad when people who got rich in the Silicon Valley engage in politics like this. Even if one disagrees with a billionaire tax, I’m sure there are better ways to engage with politics besides “protect my capital at all costs”. It is not so much that they oppose, but how they oppose.
- zippyman55 5mo agoThat is how I see it!
- TacticalCoder 5mo ago[flagged]
- roughly 5mo agoDo you know the history of why California became a tech mecca?
- ecshafer 5mo agoBecause of the Federal government heavily investing in Computer research at the Universities there and propping up the semiconductor industry?
- derwiki 5mo agoWait, I thought it was psychedelic drugs. What did the dormouse say, anyway?
- eesmith 5mo agoIt started even earlier, with US military funding projects in microwaves/radar, electronic warfare, and aerospace. Think Varian, which developed military applications for the klystron, including nuclear bomb fuses. The first semiconductor companies were considered too risky for military funding, so used risk capital. See Steve Blank's writings on the Secret History of Silicon Valley for more, like https://steveblank.com/2009/10/29/the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley-12-the-rise-of-%e2%80%9crisk-capital%e2%80%9d-part-2/ https://steveblank.com/2009/10/29/the-secret-history-of-sili... .
- sifar 5mo agoYou could flip it around. These companies wouldn't exist without California. The state had the conditions where these companies could germinate and thrive. Elsewhere they might, they might not. In an alternate reality Mr Brin could still be a billionaire owner of a company not based in CA and he would still have to face this issue or he may not. But we are here and question is why they don't think it is ok to pay these taxes. It is interesting to see their actions. There is some double think here - they want to cut ties and move out, yet want to influence the state. A sibling comment rightly said - they could be heroes by spending money that would be just a drop in the bucket for them, but instead choose to do this - still spend that money. The old adage seems true, you didn't become rich by doing that. Now I understand one may not be happy the way the state allocates the funds - but that is a different discussion.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo agoAlternative to archive.ph Text-only, no CAPTCHA, no Javascript, no DDoS on blog, no geo-blocking x="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-26/how-google-s-sergey-brin-helped-fuel-a-political-war-in-california" echo url="$x"|curl -K/dev/stdin \ egrep -o "(type\":\"paragraph)|(type\":\"text\",\"value\":\"[^\"]+)" \ |sed '/Read More:/{N;d;};s/type\":\"paragraph/<p>/;s/.\{22\}//' \ |sed '1s/^/<meta charset=utf-8><meta name=viewport content=width=device-width>/' > 1.htm firefox ./1.htm
- burnt-resistor 5mo agoFuck billionaires, their naked, craven corruption of the political system, and their making everything worse for everyone else to serve their greed.
- tim-tday 5mo agoYeah so, how about that universal basic income where everyone whose job gets crushed by AI makes an income. But if only the billionaires have money they’re the only ones who can pay it. How do those guys like paying their share? (They don’t like it at all)
- tnelsond4 5mo agoSocialism is in a conundrum, on the one hand it hates billionaires, and on the other hand it needs them in order to function and regrets their leaving. If there wasn't a class of rich people to target socialism would have no appeal.
- runep 5mo ago"I earned this bunker with enough food to feed millions and I'm not fucking sharing!"