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Tax billionaires, insure millions: The CA wealth tradeoff (lemmy.today)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/workreform@lemmy.world
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The poorest billionaire in California will make about $300 million this year. If we pass the CA wealth tax, he will only make $235 million. In exchange, millions of the poorest Californians will get health insurance. That's the tradeoff billionaires are not willing to make.

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[–] 2 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Genuine question here, probably showing my ignorance: Would a billionaire tax only in California not just encourage billionaires to leave California? To my mind, one state implementing the tax isnt good enough, or even productive if they can just go elsewhere and keep being billionaires in a broken country. It needs to be federal to be beneficial. Granted, the optics are not great, a corporate Democrat seemingly choosing rich over workers. It just seems like there's room for nuance.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    I think if CA implemented it, the hope would be other States follow suit. I think because billionaires spend their time moving between vacation homes and multiple properties, it may or may not even impact them much, if at all. The ones it does impact, they would probably have some verbiage written in there to sound good but not really have much of an actual effect. Remember, the billionaires are who donate big money to reelection campaigns, and Newsom probably lost his backbone at the right of losing his "power" and position. It's theater, really..

    So many policies already protect the billionaires class, their big businesses, and assets; and that's by design. That's why I (and so many others) argue there's no "left vs right" (distraction) it's truly class warfare.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Thanks for the reply. I don't disagree with a single point you've made. The hope that it would spread to other states is predicated on success. If it isn't successful there, it would be dead in the water everywhere else. It very much seems like the scale of the money itself has already outstripped the possibility of legislation targeting it.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 weeks ago

    Other people didn't mention that it's a one time tax, vs annual tax and that makes a difference. It costs a lot of money to move and you probably rip up longtime deals you had with the past state if your moving business headquarters too.

    States could be imposing an annual tax of up to 10% and most of these billionaires would still be billionaires the next year, a 5% tax is an inconvenience... but a horrible precedent (for them)

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