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.
There are a lot of people who perceive themselves as wealthy, including low-millionaires who have a lot of their assets tied up in stocks, and there was a lot of targeted propaganda (over $300M) trying to tie Prop42 (banning taxes on unrealized capital gains) together with 40 (wealth tax). The whole messaging that was sold to them was, “today they say they’re coming for billionaires’ stocks, tomorrow it’ll be you”. And sadly, that’s an effective messaging in a low-trust society.