The currently pay a lot of taxes, despite what internet memes say. There's a decent chance this one-time wealth tax will be net negative for state revenues.
So, what's the goal? If it is to raise more tax revenue from the very richest people, this may do that and it may not. There are clearly better ways to achieve that goal, such as a higher top income bracket, higher capital gains rates, and closing the step-up basis inheritance loophole.
In the 40s 50s the top tax rates were 90%. We built the interstate highway system among other great things. Today's rates are less than 30% and everyone wonders why there is a deficit.
They are just the nominal rates, but they cap the amount of wealth someone can earn in cash in a given year. You're right this doesn't result in the government getting all of their money, and it doesn't affect their cash invested in companies in a given year, but it does slow how quickly someone can become ultra rich and start buying up all of the corporations in your economy.
High nominal rates would still be good for keeping the economy more even footed even if it doesn't solve everything.
There are about a half dozen articles/studies you cam check out. It isnt some conspiracy theory. The amount of tax deductions and other loopholes that were used brought the effective tax rate way down. Still higher than today. But by a few percentage points. Not by 35 percentage points
That's because all of the other 1st world countries had been decimated in WW2 and the U.S. was the only industrial hub left standing to produce anything and investors had nowhere else to do business. This would never work in modern times..
You are so close. You are definitely correct that a lot of Americans don’t necessarily appreciate just how much of an economic miracle the postwar era and the many decades that followed would be. The stepping said you’re still missing a few things.
First, we need to be honest that the culture of investing through stock trading was not nearly as widespread then. Making trades was a lot harder, and it was a lot harder for international investors to buy into foreign market for a variety of reasons. So structurally, even if people wanted to invest in the US, that largely had to come about through negotiated policy, not by people moving a bunch of money.
Furthermore, one of the consequences of the economic devastation in Europe with that a lot of these countries didn’t have access money to invest elsewhere. Sure, there were people who had the means to invest in American companies somewhat, but we still didn’t have a particularly globalized economy, and a lot of people still cared a lot more about Domestic status and wealth. They Didn’t quite care about maximizing returns by optimizing some kind of globalized investment, labor, and manufacturing strategy, in part because crazy complicated logistics and freight supply chains were very difficult to manage across the globe.
The result of all of this, of course, is that the Us could make huge gains in many areas while much of Europe was still trying to get back on its feet. The problem is though, that America has developed a lot of habits and structural policies that are difficult and expensive to change. Perhaps the three biggest things that a lot of right wingers in particular don’t want to confront are our work culture, our healthcare systems, and our car dependency. When everything is growing like crazy, these things may be fine once growth returns to more moderate and sustainable levels, they become significantly more expensive.
Anyway, you’ve identified a very important root cause and I’m not going to say we should blindly adopt 1950s era policy because large systems never like large and immediate change without considerable chaos. That said, something has to change and we can’t afford to just let businesses grow infinitely. They aren’t making better products and to be honest many of them aren’t really even competing internationally. American society, including the business side of it, simply isn’t ready for the 21st century proper.
Why do you spend four paragraphs agreeing with the substance (while still largely missing the mark), only to make a surface level argument in the last paragraph, where you were actually supposed to argue?
>They aren’t making better products and to be honest many of them aren’t really even competing internationally.
And taxing them more would help?
>That said, something has to change and we can’t afford to just let businesses grow infinitely.
If that's the issue, you have other legislative options available than taxes.
Well, the problem is that you’re basic assertion is that people only invest in the US because they had no other choice. From that assertion, you were concluding that basically we can’t afford to tax rich people because of capital flight and that we would sink into some irrelevant Third World country because of it. But I’m pointing out that both the domestic and global economies didn’t even work the same way they do now, for one, and even if people wanted to invest, there were other Incentives and structural limitations, which made that very difficult. As such, it really makes your argument moot because the causation doesn’t align with what actually happened.
I don’t necessarily want to say the capital flight isn’t a problem, but I also just don’t think that every time some rich person threatens to get up and leave we should all shudder and give them exactly what they want. That’s no way to run a society and many societies, it should be pointed out, achieve basically the same quality of life, if not arguably better, with significantly fewer resources than we do. We could afford to lose a few people’s fortunes and the system we’ve created needs significant reforms anyway. If you consider yourself someone who likes the idea of fiscal responsibility, and maybe even consider yourself a deficit hawk, if you aren’t willing to raise taxes, I don’t actually think you’re that serious. And as unpopular, as I know it would be, I don’t necessarily preclude, higher taxes, across-the-board, but rich people, especially have been fueling the deficit for quite some time while benefiting from it the most.
Setting all that aside, let’s say that your point is true and I’ll just grant that to you outright. What about any of the other points that I brought up? The fact of the matter is that American spend a hell of a lot of money on things most other developed nations don’t. Probably the most obvious example are personal automobiles. Cars are enormous expense, especially when you need multiple per household, and there are very few places in the US that you can actually live without needing one. Moreover, cars come with enormous negative externalities that, even if you personally manage to not use a car, you would still bear the brunt of having to pay for roads, oil, subsidies, the environmental damage, and so on. I’m not explicitly anti car, but I do wish that more people would actually be honest about what they cost.
We could talk about things like healthcare and our workplace culture, but these would be a little bit more involved and nuance. But we could go down a whole host of other issues as well and the point is that Americans don’t understand that while we do things some things very well, there are a lot of places where our built up systems are incredibly inefficient and an enormous economic burden. The post WWII boom made those things sustainable at the time, but not long term and we continue to kick the can down the road and it will end disastrously at some point.
I guess it’s the end of all of this, it would be one thing to take your point seriously if you looked at all of these other things and could acknowledge they were a problem. But when you can’t do that, it feels like you don’t actually understand, why we’re in the position we are, while lecturing the rest of us that we don’t understand. If you want to talk tradeoffs, then let’s do that. But it seems you only want to fear monger about capital flight off of a flimsy point.
They didn't reach 50%, like 45% at absolute peak. Not sure why you're being up voted and they are down voted when if anything your comment is the more incorrect one
That is just factually incorrect, at no point was the effective total tax rate for anyone anything close to what that chart presents. Even if you want to use Zucman and Saez as a source, they present something in the 40s (I think about 42% for top 1%) as total effective rate for the highest income brackets.
If we are not going to tax their wealth, we need to get rid of loopholes and tax their debt. they get away with paying zero often. Consequences be damned... they should pay their fair share
The only reason why I can see anyone voting NO on prop 40 is that it might drive billionaires to leave the state before having to pay it. Which could reduce the income CA sees.
But that's a guess. And I don't know if anyone is actually going to leave.
So the other argument is that the tax is poorly designed, lacks accountability safeguards, and fails to address systemic issues like healthcare costs. The worry is that the funds will end up going to insurance companies who will just hike prices to gobble up the money, and meanwhile we'll still be struggling to fund things like BART (which we're voting on another tax for). So instead of fixing a systemic problem, we're just slapping a money bandaid on the broken insurance system.
I honestly don't think most people are thinking about it that deeply, and this is basically a referendum on how people feel about billionaires AND how their union is telling them to vote. It sorts of feels like the various interest groups are battling this out because they don't like that the funds are just earmarked for one industry (healthcare). Personally, I feel if it doesn't pass it's fine, because they will rework it and try something better in 2028.
The ads are mostly focused on what you said though.
Most serious economist have modeled out billions in future tax revenue losses. Billionaires do, in fact, pay a lot of tax, even if it's less that what we would like as a percent of their incomes. Here's an NBER paper by 2 Stanford economists - in their modeled scenarios, 85% of the scenarios resulted in a negative net present value for the wealth tax:
They won’t leave and if they do the next state will eventually pick it up too. The law should have an 3 year retro built into it, taxes should apply to where you made your wealth, not if you are making it after the fact. They amassed fortunes using the roads, the services, and labor from that city and state, to assume the state gets nothing because someone moved out 2 days before the bill is signed is silly. They amassed the fortunes from the state infrastructure now collect on that, it makes complete sense to me.
Industrialists always cry apocalypse if they think their lines might not rise as much as it has been before.
The seatbelt was apparently going to kill American car manufacturers who instead are out of relevance for forgetting about the same class people the billionaires are exploiting. Selling $94,000 cars for the Everyman?
100 years ago 8 hour work days and a “weekend” were supposed to “kill American innovation” and here we are. I think the simplest explanation is “some people care more about their own financial metrics than anything else in the world” and when that is the norm, it must be broken. How many are we going to let die from preventable causes while we him and haw about the fairness to the
vampires causing it? We tried unions and it built the middle class, now we are doing gig work exploitation and “contractors” and look how that’s going, how much more we want to sink before we throw on the life vest?
Not to get all existential on you and I unloaded a bit lol but I think about this a lot and have a hard time understanding the “well let’s see” people in this debate. Those in lower classes see poverty swallowing up their loved ones and we are all too strained to help them. It’s crushing… I’m sick of the debate as we let the perpetrators weigh in..
Leaving your home town to avoid helping its education, healthcare and infrastructure definitely sounds like something billionaires might be inclined to do
I don’t really have any semblance of a desire to let our state government who has a less than stellar financial track record levy a single new tax until they present a plan for accountability along with any new tax they hope to collect. I’m not voting for 40 or anything similar until they’ve got a proposition with very clear plans for what will and wont be taxed, and they need to address any open and closed loopholes in said tax. Sure it’s presented as a one time tax on a select few, but the federal income tax was a financial relief “just” during world war 1. I’m so happy our grandfathers took the government at their word without so much as asking for accountability.
The reason people vote no is because the billionaires have spent a ton of money airing commercials claiming that prop 40 will take your retirement money and house.
The uninformed voter is the largest demographic and the easiest to manipulate with misinformation.
I voted for 40 but it annoys me that all of this effort was put into a one-time tax instead of making it ongoing. Ideally, wealth tax needs to be national and there needs to be a way to disallow billionaires to take the money out of the US.
It could become a worldwide phenomenon that more equitably distributes weath, or it could economically isolate California andleave the state impoverished.
These aren't conclusions. They're wild speculations based on the individuals biases. Not really surprising since eonomics is as scientific as chiropracture.
Is there some specific flaw in his argument that makes you think no self respecting economist would ever buy into it? (knowing the sort of insane stuff regularly pushed by all kinds of not just self respecting but generally respected economists over the last century, that seems tough to believe)
Why? It's not like any of them fell on hard times in the interim. This is not a slippery slope, these people don't live in the same universe that we do.
why would say another billionaire want to move to California and invest in its economy if at any time they can change the rules and retroactively take 5% of your net worth
Because taxes function as a contract. If you’re doing business here you know the terms, and how much you’ll be expected to contribute. Going back in after the money was made and taking an extra 5% of someone’s wealth violates that agreement.
I’m all for taxing the rich, but I think if you’re going to change the rules, you change them for the future to create a better system
Do you think all rich people will do nothing? Just takes one trillionaire donating millions.
>Pennsylvania Sweepstakes: America PAC awarded 18 daily $1 million checks (totaling $18 million) to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition in support
Federal Anti-Vote Buying Statutes
52 U.S.C. § 10307(c): Makes it a federal crime to pay, offer to pay, or accept payment either for registering to vote or for voting in an election where a federal candidate is on the ballot.
Scope: The prohibition applies even if the offer is neutral (e.g., nonpartisan "vote and get entered into a drawing"). Incentivizing the act of casting a ballot itself, regardless of candidate preference, is illegal under federal law.
18 U.S.C. § 597: Criminalizes making or offering expenditures to any person to vote or withhold their vote. Violations can result in criminal fines and up to two years in federal prison.
And they've violated most principles of human decency in amassing said wealth.
Billionaires have brought this country to the brink of collapse in order to line their own pockets, carve out loopholes, create security for themselves and destroy and dismantle it for the rest. Have a look around and see if both sides are taking the high road rn
I’m happy to tax the rich, I’m very left. I want universal healthcare, free college, better roads, guaranteed time off. I just sincerely think this law was written in an immoral stupid way, I think if you pass a law this wrong you’ll convince everyone with wealth to be reactionary, solidifying the alliance of tech with the right. Tech used to mostly align left and we can get that back, but not like this.
Also it’s to help the nurses union? Those people make like 150k here, pretty low on my priorities, not at all worth the damage
Not really. They’ve mostly always been democrats, living in progressive places, educated in progressive institutions, supporting leftist causes, from housing to green energy. The left loves to push people out and the right is always happy to receive them. Once Trump loses power there will be an opportunity to realign them with democrats. I do think there’s something to be said for how vindictive trump is, I’m sure they’re trying to survive the term.
Again I’m happy to soak the rich. I support wealth taxes. This isn’t so much a tax as it is robbery, because it’s retroactive.
Well for one, many economists model the effects as having negative net present value after accounting for avoidance and capital flight. You basically have one group, who are all advocates for the wealth tax (Berkeley) saying it's going to be great, using VERY basic methodologies to get there, then most other papers on the topic trying to be more rigorous and finding the opposite. Most available evidence on other places that have tried wealth taxes shows that they don't actually work to increase revenue, and in fact DO drive capital flight and often result in lower revenue, which is why most places that have tried them have ultimately repealed them. Austria, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Luxemborg, Sweden, France - all tried and ultimately repealed. If this were a successful, net-positive tax approach that is... not the pattern you would expect to see.
This seems to assume that increasing net revenue is not just a goal of the tax, but the primary if not sole goal.
Im not entirely sure thats the goal at all, or that it should be - increasing tax revenue for the sake of increasing tax revenue is kinda inherently absurd, as a concept, after all.
The purpose of tax is literally to raise revenue for the government. The plan is explicitly presented as a way to increase revenue. If that's not the goal, what is it?
You know, I was gonna explain it, but I dont think you really believe what you are saying anyway, so instead lets test that.
If the laffer curve calculation showed that a flat 95% income tax would maximize government revenue, should we adopt a 95% tax and maximize government revenue?
Maximizing tax revenue is not the same as increasing tax revenue. In general the principle is to set taxes so that revenue is roughly equal to expenses over the long run. And again, the justification for this tax is EXPLICITLY to increase revenue, in order to make up funding shortfalls from federal healthcare funding cuts. The only person who said anything about maximizing revenue here is you.
melekin | 2 hours ago
So the argument is;
If we tax billionaires, they will go to another state and lose out investments.
But if we don't tax billionaires and they stay, they leech off the resources we have and disrupt the market anyways.
So, they staying is already not a good solution anyways?
jar4ever | 51 minutes ago
The currently pay a lot of taxes, despite what internet memes say. There's a decent chance this one-time wealth tax will be net negative for state revenues.
So, what's the goal? If it is to raise more tax revenue from the very richest people, this may do that and it may not. There are clearly better ways to achieve that goal, such as a higher top income bracket, higher capital gains rates, and closing the step-up basis inheritance loophole.
Thadken | 42 minutes ago
They currently pay about 3 billion a year collectively or 2.4% of Californias tax revenue which is not, in fact, a lot.
athelard | 23 minutes ago
It depends on what you consider a lot.
Xanderamn | 21 minutes ago
2.4% isnt a lot, but pop off queen
VVynn | 19 minutes ago
What percentage of billionaires would bother to move out of state just because they’re down to only, say, $50,000,000 per year in income?
ShadowsOfTheBreeze | 3 hours ago
In the 40s 50s the top tax rates were 90%. We built the interstate highway system among other great things. Today's rates are less than 30% and everyone wonders why there is a deficit.
camshun7 | 2 hours ago
This is easy math
Who was influenced the most, how much will it cost to trash talk the other?
This is basic economics, not real life.
nitbitch69 | 2 hours ago
Those were just the nominal rates, not the effective rates people actually paid. They were barely any higher than today.
Source
lunartree | 2 hours ago
They are just the nominal rates, but they cap the amount of wealth someone can earn in cash in a given year. You're right this doesn't result in the government getting all of their money, and it doesn't affect their cash invested in companies in a given year, but it does slow how quickly someone can become ultra rich and start buying up all of the corporations in your economy.
High nominal rates would still be good for keeping the economy more even footed even if it doesn't solve everything.
Malforus | 13 minutes ago
I want to point out that data is almost a decade out of date which obviates the trump presidencies where top tier tax rates were cut aggressively.
nitbitch69 | 11 minutes ago
The historical rates haven't changed and the comment i replied to is no less incorrect
Necessary-Camp149 | 20 minutes ago
What is this propaganda? This source is specifically using a quoted rate from 12+ years ago ... in a source from 9 years ago... all pre-covid.
nitbitch69 | 12 minutes ago
The historical rates changed?
Wild_Height_901 | 2 hours ago
Don't bother. The average redditor has ZERO clue about economics. Let alone the history of it.
Slackjawed_Horror | 2 hours ago
A lot of us know you shouldn't ever look at the Tax Foundation for actual information on taxes.
Like asking the NRA for gun violence stats.
Wild_Height_901 | 2 hours ago
There are about a half dozen articles/studies you cam check out. It isnt some conspiracy theory. The amount of tax deductions and other loopholes that were used brought the effective tax rate way down. Still higher than today. But by a few percentage points. Not by 35 percentage points
Throwaway354591 | 33 minutes ago
Exactly, if we all just pitched in a little bit more money we could build another quarter mile of the California high speed rail.
fighterpilottim | an hour ago
The highest tax bracket is 37%.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/2026-tax-brackets/
Evilsushione | 50 minutes ago
Long term investment tax loophole
Financial_Flight6877 | 3 hours ago
That's because all of the other 1st world countries had been decimated in WW2 and the U.S. was the only industrial hub left standing to produce anything and investors had nowhere else to do business. This would never work in modern times..
mycall | 2 hours ago
Perhaps that's Trump's plan for WW3. Let the rest of the world blow up and US can become the world's industrial base again 😜
nitbitch69 | 2 hours ago
No that isn't why
notapoliticalalt | 2 hours ago
You are so close. You are definitely correct that a lot of Americans don’t necessarily appreciate just how much of an economic miracle the postwar era and the many decades that followed would be. The stepping said you’re still missing a few things.
First, we need to be honest that the culture of investing through stock trading was not nearly as widespread then. Making trades was a lot harder, and it was a lot harder for international investors to buy into foreign market for a variety of reasons. So structurally, even if people wanted to invest in the US, that largely had to come about through negotiated policy, not by people moving a bunch of money.
Furthermore, one of the consequences of the economic devastation in Europe with that a lot of these countries didn’t have access money to invest elsewhere. Sure, there were people who had the means to invest in American companies somewhat, but we still didn’t have a particularly globalized economy, and a lot of people still cared a lot more about Domestic status and wealth. They Didn’t quite care about maximizing returns by optimizing some kind of globalized investment, labor, and manufacturing strategy, in part because crazy complicated logistics and freight supply chains were very difficult to manage across the globe.
The result of all of this, of course, is that the Us could make huge gains in many areas while much of Europe was still trying to get back on its feet. The problem is though, that America has developed a lot of habits and structural policies that are difficult and expensive to change. Perhaps the three biggest things that a lot of right wingers in particular don’t want to confront are our work culture, our healthcare systems, and our car dependency. When everything is growing like crazy, these things may be fine once growth returns to more moderate and sustainable levels, they become significantly more expensive.
Anyway, you’ve identified a very important root cause and I’m not going to say we should blindly adopt 1950s era policy because large systems never like large and immediate change without considerable chaos. That said, something has to change and we can’t afford to just let businesses grow infinitely. They aren’t making better products and to be honest many of them aren’t really even competing internationally. American society, including the business side of it, simply isn’t ready for the 21st century proper.
DieuDivin | 2 hours ago
Why do you spend four paragraphs agreeing with the substance (while still largely missing the mark), only to make a surface level argument in the last paragraph, where you were actually supposed to argue?
>They aren’t making better products and to be honest many of them aren’t really even competing internationally.
And taxing them more would help?
>That said, something has to change and we can’t afford to just let businesses grow infinitely.
If that's the issue, you have other legislative options available than taxes.
notapoliticalalt | 24 minutes ago
Well, the problem is that you’re basic assertion is that people only invest in the US because they had no other choice. From that assertion, you were concluding that basically we can’t afford to tax rich people because of capital flight and that we would sink into some irrelevant Third World country because of it. But I’m pointing out that both the domestic and global economies didn’t even work the same way they do now, for one, and even if people wanted to invest, there were other Incentives and structural limitations, which made that very difficult. As such, it really makes your argument moot because the causation doesn’t align with what actually happened.
I don’t necessarily want to say the capital flight isn’t a problem, but I also just don’t think that every time some rich person threatens to get up and leave we should all shudder and give them exactly what they want. That’s no way to run a society and many societies, it should be pointed out, achieve basically the same quality of life, if not arguably better, with significantly fewer resources than we do. We could afford to lose a few people’s fortunes and the system we’ve created needs significant reforms anyway. If you consider yourself someone who likes the idea of fiscal responsibility, and maybe even consider yourself a deficit hawk, if you aren’t willing to raise taxes, I don’t actually think you’re that serious. And as unpopular, as I know it would be, I don’t necessarily preclude, higher taxes, across-the-board, but rich people, especially have been fueling the deficit for quite some time while benefiting from it the most.
Setting all that aside, let’s say that your point is true and I’ll just grant that to you outright. What about any of the other points that I brought up? The fact of the matter is that American spend a hell of a lot of money on things most other developed nations don’t. Probably the most obvious example are personal automobiles. Cars are enormous expense, especially when you need multiple per household, and there are very few places in the US that you can actually live without needing one. Moreover, cars come with enormous negative externalities that, even if you personally manage to not use a car, you would still bear the brunt of having to pay for roads, oil, subsidies, the environmental damage, and so on. I’m not explicitly anti car, but I do wish that more people would actually be honest about what they cost.
We could talk about things like healthcare and our workplace culture, but these would be a little bit more involved and nuance. But we could go down a whole host of other issues as well and the point is that Americans don’t understand that while we do things some things very well, there are a lot of places where our built up systems are incredibly inefficient and an enormous economic burden. The post WWII boom made those things sustainable at the time, but not long term and we continue to kick the can down the road and it will end disastrously at some point.
I guess it’s the end of all of this, it would be one thing to take your point seriously if you looked at all of these other things and could acknowledge they were a problem. But when you can’t do that, it feels like you don’t actually understand, why we’re in the position we are, while lecturing the rest of us that we don’t understand. If you want to talk tradeoffs, then let’s do that. But it seems you only want to fear monger about capital flight off of a flimsy point.
ReturnOfBigChungus | 3 hours ago
Nominal rates in the top bracket were high, but overall effective rates for higher earners (top 1%) were about the same. That's not the story here.
Slackjawed_Horror | 3 hours ago
Effective rates were like 50%.
nitbitch69 | 2 hours ago
They didn't reach 50%, like 45% at absolute peak. Not sure why you're being up voted and they are down voted when if anything your comment is the more incorrect one
Jake0024 | 2 hours ago
They were not about the same.
Effective tax rates by income since 1950 : r/charts
strange_username58 | 2 hours ago
linking a reddit post as your data source?
Jake0024 | 2 hours ago
You know we're on reddit right? Feel free to click the links if you actually care
Edit: dishonest commenter blocked me lmao
12-34 | 18 minutes ago
Looks like they're incapable of reading the source in the chart and are either acting in bad faith or just plain dumb.
Jake0024 | 9 minutes ago
Bingo
ReturnOfBigChungus | an hour ago
That is just factually incorrect, at no point was the effective total tax rate for anyone anything close to what that chart presents. Even if you want to use Zucman and Saez as a source, they present something in the 40s (I think about 42% for top 1%) as total effective rate for the highest income brackets.
Jake0024 | an hour ago
Oh well as long as you say so
And yeah sure if you exchange "top 400 families" for "top 1%" yeah the rate changes lmfao
sarcasmismysuperpowr | 3 hours ago
If we are not going to tax their wealth, we need to get rid of loopholes and tax their debt. they get away with paying zero often. Consequences be damned... they should pay their fair share
Nathan-Stubblefield | 2 hours ago
“Tax their debt!🤣😂😆
BIGpoppaPUMP42069 | 10 minutes ago
these people are just not well, they now want to tax debt, completely unhinged from reality
yacoub15 | 3 hours ago
The only reason why I can see anyone voting NO on prop 40 is that it might drive billionaires to leave the state before having to pay it. Which could reduce the income CA sees. But that's a guess. And I don't know if anyone is actually going to leave.
Shintasama | 3 hours ago
It's retroactive to Jan 1, 2026. They would have had to already have left.
yacoub15 | 3 hours ago
Beautiful. No I love the explanation. Thank you guys. I already voted yes 40, no 41,42.
FinndBors | 9 minutes ago
As replied in other threads the retroactivity is unlikely to survive a court challenge.
Not to mention having the state implement a wealth tax.
DoctorSpacecase | 3 hours ago
So the other argument is that the tax is poorly designed, lacks accountability safeguards, and fails to address systemic issues like healthcare costs. The worry is that the funds will end up going to insurance companies who will just hike prices to gobble up the money, and meanwhile we'll still be struggling to fund things like BART (which we're voting on another tax for). So instead of fixing a systemic problem, we're just slapping a money bandaid on the broken insurance system.
I honestly don't think most people are thinking about it that deeply, and this is basically a referendum on how people feel about billionaires AND how their union is telling them to vote. It sorts of feels like the various interest groups are battling this out because they don't like that the funds are just earmarked for one industry (healthcare). Personally, I feel if it doesn't pass it's fine, because they will rework it and try something better in 2028.
The ads are mostly focused on what you said though.
Sennten | 2 hours ago
It really needs to be a regular yearly tax and not a one off thing.
OG_LiLi | 3 hours ago
What income reduction? They don’t pay income taxes already. This is a net non loss.
Someone will buy their dumb homes and pay taxes on the property.
ReturnOfBigChungus | 3 hours ago
Most serious economist have modeled out billions in future tax revenue losses. Billionaires do, in fact, pay a lot of tax, even if it's less that what we would like as a percent of their incomes. Here's an NBER paper by 2 Stanford economists - in their modeled scenarios, 85% of the scenarios resulted in a negative net present value for the wealth tax:
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35899
FinndBors | 7 minutes ago
> They don’t pay income taxes already
This is false. They pay a good chunk of California income tax.
You can argue they don’t pay enough, but they absolutely pay a significant portion of it.
MisterSanitation | 3 hours ago
They won’t leave and if they do the next state will eventually pick it up too. The law should have an 3 year retro built into it, taxes should apply to where you made your wealth, not if you are making it after the fact. They amassed fortunes using the roads, the services, and labor from that city and state, to assume the state gets nothing because someone moved out 2 days before the bill is signed is silly. They amassed the fortunes from the state infrastructure now collect on that, it makes complete sense to me.
Industrialists always cry apocalypse if they think their lines might not rise as much as it has been before.
The seatbelt was apparently going to kill American car manufacturers who instead are out of relevance for forgetting about the same class people the billionaires are exploiting. Selling $94,000 cars for the Everyman?
100 years ago 8 hour work days and a “weekend” were supposed to “kill American innovation” and here we are. I think the simplest explanation is “some people care more about their own financial metrics than anything else in the world” and when that is the norm, it must be broken. How many are we going to let die from preventable causes while we him and haw about the fairness to the vampires causing it? We tried unions and it built the middle class, now we are doing gig work exploitation and “contractors” and look how that’s going, how much more we want to sink before we throw on the life vest?
Not to get all existential on you and I unloaded a bit lol but I think about this a lot and have a hard time understanding the “well let’s see” people in this debate. Those in lower classes see poverty swallowing up their loved ones and we are all too strained to help them. It’s crushing… I’m sick of the debate as we let the perpetrators weigh in..
Brrdock | 3 hours ago
Leaving your home town to avoid helping its education, healthcare and infrastructure definitely sounds like something billionaires might be inclined to do
Nathan-Stubblefield | 2 hours ago
Several left in December 2025, early enough they are exempt. If it passes they won’t be paying.
slab_schitty | 2 hours ago
Isn’t californias economy the 3rd or 4th largest in the world?
They will be just fine.
fighterpilottim | an hour ago
The tax is retroactive to a past date. If they lived in the state as of (2025?), they owe it.
MotherClaim3380 | 33 minutes ago
The retroactivity will be immediately challenged in court, if the measure passes. Doubtful it will survive.
FinndBors | 10 minutes ago
Retroactivity for a brand new tax has been struck down by courts in the past. Besides quite a few people have already left because of this.
EX0PIL0T | an hour ago
I don’t really have any semblance of a desire to let our state government who has a less than stellar financial track record levy a single new tax until they present a plan for accountability along with any new tax they hope to collect. I’m not voting for 40 or anything similar until they’ve got a proposition with very clear plans for what will and wont be taxed, and they need to address any open and closed loopholes in said tax. Sure it’s presented as a one time tax on a select few, but the federal income tax was a financial relief “just” during world war 1. I’m so happy our grandfathers took the government at their word without so much as asking for accountability.
LurkerFailsLurking | 2 hours ago
I wish they would leave the state and take their company headquarters with them. It might make the Bay affordable again.
mnemy | 32 minutes ago
The reason people vote no is because the billionaires have spent a ton of money airing commercials claiming that prop 40 will take your retirement money and house.
The uninformed voter is the largest demographic and the easiest to manipulate with misinformation.
know_limits | 29 minutes ago
I voted for 40 but it annoys me that all of this effort was put into a one-time tax instead of making it ongoing. Ideally, wealth tax needs to be national and there needs to be a way to disallow billionaires to take the money out of the US.
Fit_Salamander_2814 | 2 hours ago
Yeah, no shit.
Turns out, the conclusion you draw really depends on the assumptions you make, and your existing prejudices about the thing you're studying.
In other news, water is wet, and you can get a bullseye every time you shoot an arrow, as long as you draw one around where it lands.
KitchenBomber | 2 hours ago
It's just contradictory slippery slope arguments.
It could become a worldwide phenomenon that more equitably distributes weath, or it could economically isolate California andleave the state impoverished.
These aren't conclusions. They're wild speculations based on the individuals biases. Not really surprising since eonomics is as scientific as chiropracture.
RadicallyDontCare | 2 hours ago
Calling Zucman an economist is generous. He’s an activist with some intellectual credentials.
No self respecting economist would think an easy to dodge one time tax is a good idea.
Sennten | 2 hours ago
Why do you think that?
Is there some specific flaw in his argument that makes you think no self respecting economist would ever buy into it? (knowing the sort of insane stuff regularly pushed by all kinds of not just self respecting but generally respected economists over the last century, that seems tough to believe)
Cream_Puffs_ | 3 hours ago
Taxing billionaires is good. But retroactive tax is no way to govern
AlizarinCrimzen | 2 hours ago
Why? It's not like any of them fell on hard times in the interim. This is not a slippery slope, these people don't live in the same universe that we do.
BIGpoppaPUMP42069 | 8 minutes ago
why would say another billionaire want to move to California and invest in its economy if at any time they can change the rules and retroactively take 5% of your net worth
Cream_Puffs_ | 2 hours ago
Because taxes function as a contract. If you’re doing business here you know the terms, and how much you’ll be expected to contribute. Going back in after the money was made and taking an extra 5% of someone’s wealth violates that agreement.
I’m all for taxing the rich, but I think if you’re going to change the rules, you change them for the future to create a better system
thenightisdark | 2 hours ago
Do you think all rich people will do nothing? Just takes one trillionaire donating millions.
>Pennsylvania Sweepstakes: America PAC awarded 18 daily $1 million checks (totaling $18 million) to registered voters in swing states who signed a petition in support
Federal Anti-Vote Buying Statutes 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c): Makes it a federal crime to pay, offer to pay, or accept payment either for registering to vote or for voting in an election where a federal candidate is on the ballot. Scope: The prohibition applies even if the offer is neutral (e.g., nonpartisan "vote and get entered into a drawing"). Incentivizing the act of casting a ballot itself, regardless of candidate preference, is illegal under federal law. 18 U.S.C. § 597: Criminalizes making or offering expenditures to any person to vote or withhold their vote. Violations can result in criminal fines and up to two years in federal prison.
Just an random example.
AlizarinCrimzen | 2 hours ago
And they've violated most principles of human decency in amassing said wealth.
Billionaires have brought this country to the brink of collapse in order to line their own pockets, carve out loopholes, create security for themselves and destroy and dismantle it for the rest. Have a look around and see if both sides are taking the high road rn
Cream_Puffs_ | an hour ago
I’m happy to tax the rich, I’m very left. I want universal healthcare, free college, better roads, guaranteed time off. I just sincerely think this law was written in an immoral stupid way, I think if you pass a law this wrong you’ll convince everyone with wealth to be reactionary, solidifying the alliance of tech with the right. Tech used to mostly align left and we can get that back, but not like this.
Also it’s to help the nurses union? Those people make like 150k here, pretty low on my priorities, not at all worth the damage
AlizarinCrimzen | an hour ago
I'm not interested in courting Bezos and Altman, I'm interested in getting their money out of politics.
Cream_Puffs_ | an hour ago
Bezos has never been Californian…
AlizarinCrimzen | an hour ago
And the nit you've picked changes nothing about my stance. They've all thrown their lot in with the insurrectionists..?
Cream_Puffs_ | an hour ago
Not really. They’ve mostly always been democrats, living in progressive places, educated in progressive institutions, supporting leftist causes, from housing to green energy. The left loves to push people out and the right is always happy to receive them. Once Trump loses power there will be an opportunity to realign them with democrats. I do think there’s something to be said for how vindictive trump is, I’m sure they’re trying to survive the term.
Again I’m happy to soak the rich. I support wealth taxes. This isn’t so much a tax as it is robbery, because it’s retroactive.
strange_username58 | 4 hours ago
It's a stupid tax especially the way it's currently written.
redditsuckbutt696969 | 4 hours ago
What's stupid about it?
United-Vermicelli-92 | 4 hours ago
They dont know, they just repeat the billionaire-owned news message.
ReturnOfBigChungus | 3 hours ago
Well for one, many economists model the effects as having negative net present value after accounting for avoidance and capital flight. You basically have one group, who are all advocates for the wealth tax (Berkeley) saying it's going to be great, using VERY basic methodologies to get there, then most other papers on the topic trying to be more rigorous and finding the opposite. Most available evidence on other places that have tried wealth taxes shows that they don't actually work to increase revenue, and in fact DO drive capital flight and often result in lower revenue, which is why most places that have tried them have ultimately repealed them. Austria, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Luxemborg, Sweden, France - all tried and ultimately repealed. If this were a successful, net-positive tax approach that is... not the pattern you would expect to see.
Sennten | 2 hours ago
This seems to assume that increasing net revenue is not just a goal of the tax, but the primary if not sole goal.
Im not entirely sure thats the goal at all, or that it should be - increasing tax revenue for the sake of increasing tax revenue is kinda inherently absurd, as a concept, after all.
ReturnOfBigChungus | an hour ago
The purpose of tax is literally to raise revenue for the government. The plan is explicitly presented as a way to increase revenue. If that's not the goal, what is it?
Sennten | an hour ago
You know, I was gonna explain it, but I dont think you really believe what you are saying anyway, so instead lets test that.
If the laffer curve calculation showed that a flat 95% income tax would maximize government revenue, should we adopt a 95% tax and maximize government revenue?
ReturnOfBigChungus | an hour ago
Maximizing tax revenue is not the same as increasing tax revenue. In general the principle is to set taxes so that revenue is roughly equal to expenses over the long run. And again, the justification for this tax is EXPLICITLY to increase revenue, in order to make up funding shortfalls from federal healthcare funding cuts. The only person who said anything about maximizing revenue here is you.
So again, what is the purpose of this tax?
strange_username58 | 4 hours ago
How they are measuring networth