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California ‘billionaire tax’ makes ballot despite opposition from tech moguls
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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Technology
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One time 5%, that's like a bandaid on a severed artery
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.
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!
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 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%
I think it sets a precedent
That is why it needs to be a 1% annual tax.
At the very minimum, a 2% worldwide annual tax to prevent some tax evasion.
At 2% it would hurt those who hold bonds at 3.9% (and below) and when there is a planned 2% inflation rate. (The economy is usually better for the working class when bonds average between 2-5% returns).
But I agree that it should be global.
The 2% would be applied to households worth 100 million dollars or more, I'm pretty sure they could spare the change without much impact on their lifestyles.
Why not make it go, 1%, 2%,4%,8%,16%,32%,64% based on how much they had? Hurting the trillionaire and the centibillionaires the hardest
The goal is to have it low enough so that every single country in the world agrees to set it up, even tax havens like Bermuda, Luxembourg or Monaco. But high enough to be effective. Then, once it's agreed upon, we can make it better and more progressive.
Motherfucker they take 35% of what we make.
Or more.
But you do realize that the billionaires are going to try to poison pill any such legislation by making it apply to everyone.
Yes, I am well aware that the only path forward is playing mario brothers multiplayer, we can do it.
It would be easier if the location of bowser was tracked on some map (ideally realtime) so that players could speedrun to their boss fight.
Do it!
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.