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Apparently majority of Californians (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 days ago by to c/california@lemmy.world
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They did a really good job on ads. Don’t look up how much they spent just on fooling the population.

A Simpsons meme saying Won’t somebody please think of the billionaires?
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[–] 85 points 5 days ago (24 children)

I'm apparently so out of touch I can't even fathom how this happened.

I know there was obviously billionaire campaigning but what was their argument? Just lies that it would somehow affect the average person? Or 60% of the state think they're temporarily embarrassed billionaires?

This is like last cycle when we voted to keep prison slavery legal.. I thought ok who is going to vote this way? Like what the fuck is wrong with people?

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  • [–] 62 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (16 children)

    All of that, that the bill isn’t perfect, and there might be loopholes, and it’s hard to actually figure out what “assets” are, and on and on. Never mind the fact that any starting point would be better than nothing.

    I mean even fucking Planned Parenthood came out against it [1], which is profoundly disappointing.

    Sergey Brin alone supposedly spent at least $100 million to defeat it [2]. The motherfuckers even funded three different poison pill props to neutralize it. Pretty much every tactic they could use they did. Newsome and Becerra being against it didn’t help either.

    1: https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/planned-parenthood-billionaire-tax-california-22336650.php

    2: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/10/google-co-founder-sergey-brin-has-now-spent-100-million-to-fight-the-billionaire-tax/

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  • [–] 29 points 5 days ago (7 children)

    Surprisingly level headed response from Jensen Huang. 5% is a drop in the bucket for these billionaires and they act like it's going to impoverish them.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 days ago

    The billionaires were panicking because their wealth was by the controlling shares in their own company. There can be two types of shares, ones that have decision making power and others that don't, just for trading. If billionaires had to give up their controlling shares to pay the tax bill, that would dilute their control. They didn't want that.

    Jensen's shares are the other kind. He can pay the tax bill without losing control. He's more ok with this than the Zuck. Zuck's entire wealth comes from owning 99% of the controlling shares.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 days ago (5 children)

    He's a decent guy, or he was, before he put himself in bad company. NVIDIA has never done layoffs.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    Being a billionaire automatically excludes you from being a “good guy.”

    10 million people starve to death or die from preventable disease each year. Who the hell could have a conscience and become a billionaire in the face of that?

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  • [–] 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

    This guy?

    Jensen Huang signing a boob

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  • [–] 8 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    I mean even fucking Planned Parenthood came out against it [1], which is profoundly disappointing.

    ???? TF?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    would provide only a one-time revenue boost at a time when California needs ongoing funding to recover from the impact of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act,

    They are taking the long winning strategy of "perfect is the enemy of the good". If we don't pass a one time tax now, maybe that will by some mysterious mechanism cause a more durable tax later.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    three different poison pill props to neutralize it.

    Two poison pill propositions, 41 and 42.

    But...while we can't say for sure yet, at this point in time, extrapolating from the results that are in, Prop 40 probably lost outright on its own, independently of Prop 41 and Prop 42 (though Prop 42 does look likely to pass).

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Wow that took a while to find exactly their rationale for not supporting it and:

    would provide only a one-time revenue boost at a time when California needs ongoing funding to recover from the impact of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act,

    So it's a 'let the perfect be the enemy of the good' scenario. It's not good enough so better to not do anything in hopes that it will inspire more durable approach.... Ugh...

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    If it was just that, I would agree, but the problems went deeper than just "it's a start but not good enough"

    The beneficiaries of the fund was a SINGLE union, not the whole state, and there were poison pill provisions ensuring that we couldn't do it again in future, so this would have been a one and done, not a prescident like we all hoped. So basically it was bound to fail to accomplish what we would hope even if it passed and would likely make things more difficult to get an actual tax, instead of just a narrowly applied windfall

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  • [–] -2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    I mean even fucking Planned Parenthood came out against it [1], which is profoundly disappointing.

    Planned Parenthood is not just a fucked up, condescending, outdated, eugenicist name. It's a right-wing organization (liberals). Don't expect much from them.

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  • [–] 30 points 5 days ago (1 child)

    I’ve been telling everyone the entire election cycle that we were being propagandized to hell here in CA. Every single commercial break had at least one ad about how the wealth tax was going to be used to tax regular Californians because of a “loophole” (incredibly dishonest reading of the text that almost certainly wouldn’t have survived court had anyone tried it).

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  • [–] 14 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

    SO many anti wealth tax ads reaching all kinds of demographics too. I watch some foriegn language content and would get spammed with propaganda ads in said language. That’s when I knew it was done for

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  • [–] 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

    I think the rejection is pretty straightforward... It's a lack of trust. California doesn't have a revenue problem; it's got a spending problem. When you couple that with some well known cases of "taxes on the wealthy" morphing into taxes on the ordinary over time (like AMT), it makes voters suspicious that this proposition was actually for it's stated purpose, and even though slippery slopes are a logical fallacy, people don't always employ logic when voting.

    There are other factors too of course, but the bill's sponsors failed to overcome the general distrust voters have of their elected officials and California tax authorities.

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  • [–] 15 points 5 days ago

    It definitely does have a revenue problem, trumps OBBB gutted federal funding for medi-cal and cal-fresh and the state can't cover those gaps without more tax revenue.

    Unless you want to say that food and healthcare for the poor are "spending problems"

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Billionaires don't need arguments when they can carpet bomb the state with bullshit advertisements.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

    bingo. they convinced a huge number of people that they would be getting taxed more (even though they aren't billionaires) if this billionaire tax went through. People are stupid and VERY lazy and didn't check the sources of where this bullshit was coming from.

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