From the voting-against-your-self-interests dept.
California voters rejected a ballot measure that would have implemented a one-time wealth tax on the state’s billionaires, turning down one of the most aggressive efforts to hike taxes on the ultrawealthy.
Proposition 40, known colloquially as the billionaire tax, was unable to overcome a flood of negative advertising bankrolled by some of the state’s richest residents.
The measure would have levied a 5% tax on the assets of more than 200 billionaires next year. Advocates estimate it would have raised $103 billion, with 90% of it going to fill state healthcare funding holes created by President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax law.
All voters are just temporarily embarrassed billionaires, I suppose. Don’t get your Huang caught in a ringer.
You wonder if it weren’t legal for businesses and billionaires to spend unlimited money putting out “advertising” for political messaging that benefits them, and were restricted to just submitting statements for the ballot books, whether these would have gone differently.
Unfortunately, a lot of my partner’s extended family would have voted for this either way, because they fancy themselves as wealthy (they’re low-millionaires, not even close to this affecting them), and actively dislike people they perceive as not-wealthy.