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While the concept of progressive wealth taxation is very important and good, executing on such taxes is very hard.
I'm skeptical this bill is actually a positive step in the overall campaign. That said, I think the more discussion about the concept, the better.
~69% of Gen Z support it. Time to success is a function of the age out rate of the 55+ voting cohort (~2M/year).
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6096809-gen-z-taxes-we...
https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/cms/prod_cms_alt/file/...
Then they should vote more.
Gen Z participated much less than the general electorate in the last election. In 2024 Gen Z voter turnout in the presidential election was 47% vs 65% overall turnout.
Democratic Socialists keep winning elections, so I agree that as long as youth turnout remains high and older voters keep aging out (as death is inevitable), we are on course. The grip of the Olds will weaken eventually. Almost twice as many 55+ voters have died since the last presidential election than margin of victory (relevant because older cohorts tilt conservative per Pew Research). Just gotta keep grinding, and hope that this administration has taught young folks to turn out. Maybe they still won’t, we’ll have to observe and report.
The desired outcome is that billionaires should pay their "fair share". That's fine, but are the supporters of this sure that this is the best way to do it?
Also, do they know who really is going to eventually pay for this tax? Guess. (It is not most billionaires.)
On top of that, those taxes will require founders to liquidate their holdings and will also affect employees holding the stock as well so it actually hits tech workers harder.
It's bad enough that the large tech companies are now funding AI data centers by selling their own stock. So why would the founders want to tolerate a >$1B-$40B hit to their own net worth for a tax that really is not a one time tax which the threshold of this "wealth tax" will eventually get lowered into the 100M zone?
As I understand, this is the best way to do which we have so far. We are welcome to find a better way while we're using this approach.
How is a marginal land value tax not a far, far better way? It’s already taxed, just need to multiply it by a different number.
What the linked poll asked is "Would you prefer to vote for a candidate for Congress who supports tax increases on wealthy Americans?". I would say yes to that, even though I don't support this specific California tax proposal, and I don't think that's a terribly uncommon perspective.
Taxing gains on the value of anything used in a contract as collateral is a simple and useful start.
Publicity is good I think. We want the public to understand that very rich people pay less taxes than the average person. I don't think this is commonly understood, because people get caught up on income statistics, which are an incomplete picture of the accumulation of money.
Money has to come from someplace if you want the US Gov to stop printing money and inflation.
What is hardly mentioned about inflation is the tax cuts for the rich. That increases money supply and forces the Fed to borrow more, or find other ways of raising funds to pay for the government.
So yes, either fix the tax code or enable this wealth tax nation wide, no other choice. One reason people like the 50s was everyone was taxed and most wealth was not in the hands of the few.
The nice thing about economics is how unreplicable it is due to exogenous circumstances.
It will be interesting to see how many very successful people decide they don't want to supply even more of the tax base.
"Second, the proponents’ 10 percent avoidance assumption is obsolete before signatures have even been submitted. Between the initiatives announcement on October 15, 2025 and the residency snapshot date of January 1, 2026, just six publicly confirmed departures eliminated far more than 10 percent of the base. During this period, nearly 30 percent of California’s wealth tax base left the state, and this only includes the billionaires who publicly announced their departures (see Table 1). "
https://libertylensecon.substack.com/p/california-wealth-tax...
Unlike in New York City, though, billionaires don't contribute that much to a total income tax receipts- a little over 2%, though that is from about 150 households, so anybody moving will have necessarily a significant impact.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w35218
https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/leave-if-you-tax-them-...
That is a shocking figure. It means that six decision makers withdrew the per capita revenue of over eleven million people. So we can quantify the wealth inequality at ≈ 1,900,000 to 1.