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Billionaire Tax Officially Heads to Nov. 3 Ballot
- Bostonian 4mo agoA "one-time" tax to fund recurring health care and educational expenses is an obvious lie.
- xhkkffbf 4mo agoAll of the wealth has been taxed before, often multiple times. Adding another layer sure seems like overkill.
- AnimalMuppet 4mo agoWell, 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.
- dh2022 4mo agoThe wealth has barely been taxed at all. Wealth comes from holding assets not from labor, and asset ownership is barely taxed: 1. stocks and commercial real estate are allowed to appreciate without taxation (unlike personal residences outside Cali), 2. multinationals wrote for themselves obscure tax rules so they end up paying almost no tax, 3. interest expense for companies and ultra high net worth individuals is subtracted from taxable income (for personal mortgages the interest expense deduction is capped) 4. Rich people organize their assets so estate taxes do not tax their estates when they die and thus their wealth goes to their children. As you can see wealth is barely taxed.
- _DeadFred_ 4mo agoUm no. "The income tax base captures 60 % of economic income of the top 1 % of wealth-holders." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272725002178 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
- tim-tday 4mo agoBe honest. It has been taxed once at 1/3 the rate that wages are taxed. Capital gains gets taxed at 10% (which is how rich people get their money). Poor people pay about 30% of their income in tax. Our tax system disproportionately favors the wealthy. I know. I’ve been poor, I’ve worked minimum wage. Now I make much more money and the I’ve watched the tax system favor me more the more I make.
- hsnewman 4mo agoIn 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 4mo ago41 of the 56 men who signed the document containing that statement were slave owners.
- decremental 4mo ago[dead]
- whateveracct 4mo agoand 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)
- nickdurfe 4mo 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"
- pipes 4mo agoBut the constitution doesn't say: "all white land-owning men are created equal" It said "all men are created equal". It took a long time to get to this point in human history and it's worth defending.
- 4mo ago
- 0xy 4mo agoEven 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 4mo agoYou need to remember that the proponents of this kind of thing WANT rich assholes to leave. They consider that an environmental social improvement.
- onemoresoop 4mo agoIf 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.
- 0xy 4mo agoStarbucks is shifting corporate jobs from Washington state to Tennessee as a result of this rhetoric. Chicago's financial industry was famously carved out due to the same kind of rhetoric, with Citadel moving to Florida, causing massive damage to the city and a huge financial hole (the city can barely fund the CTA, and it nearly collapsed in 2025). You sure showed those billionaires by destroying the jobs of thousands of middle class workers and losing out on the tax revenue that was funding public transit and critical infrastructure. Nice!
- bakies 4mo agoYou ought to link those things together a little better. The CTA propped up by a single finance firm???? Cmon
- vrganj 4mo ago
- telesilla 4mo agoAzim 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 4mo agoGood 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.
- telesilla 4mo agoAgreed. We could posit that the biggest impact a billionaire could have to improve the world would be to lobby for increased taxes.
- nosioptar 4mo agoI 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.
- JKCalhoun 4mo agoNever mind that when we tax billionaires, we (the people) decide what to spend it on.
- tim-tday 4mo agoDo we though? I’ve never been consulted. I would like us to stop making Abram’s Tanks that the army doesn’t need and have repeatedly asked us to stop providing. I think the high speed rail was a mistake, an illustration of all the reasons we can’t build infrastructure. I’d have preferred that we spent the money fixing those things rather than throwing it into the black hole. The F35 is a mistake. Nobody asked me to weigh in a decade ago when it became obvious that. Some people work to control costs. Those are not the same ones who get elected on that platform. The last famous attempt actually cost us more than it saved. I would say that I’ve ever had the chance to decide what to spend it on.
- schacon 4mo agoLove 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 4mo agoI mean, people already do pay property taxes on homes? So this isn’t a very good retort.
- schacon 4mo agoIn 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 4mo ago1. 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
- JKCalhoun 4mo agoAny why should Prop 13 apply to commercial real estate?
- georgeburdell 4mo ago
- andrewjf 4mo agoI 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).
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dh2022 4mo agoI hope all billionaires will depart for that island in Florida to bunk with Bozos and Kushner. That poor island will probably sink under the weight of so much ego.