The California Governor or State AG needs to sue to get this "Billionaire Tax" potential ballot initiative immediately scuttled.
They proposed a tax assuming 225 people with $2T of wealth would just sit around and allow an asset seizure. Turns out $700B already left in the last few weeks! Imagine what this $2T will turn into by November??
There is a provision in the California constitution that allows the state to sue to block ballot initiatives that could deeply impede their ability to govern.
A ballot initiative to create 0% income tax would be such a measure because it would create meaningful harm to California's ability to govern.
You can now make the case that this Billionaire Tax is equally destructive. With the loss of wealth already in less than a few weeks, there are many scenarios where if this ballot initiative is allowed to stand, it will decimate the hi income tax payer pool in California. This, in turn, will create many tens of billions of dollars of lost revenue that will then show up in lost services - health, education, policing etc.
Moreover, the constitutionality of the ballot is flimsy at best anyways and even if voted in will see decades and hundreds of lawsuits at both the state and federal level. Those won't be resolved until the mid 2030s! But by that time, all the billionaires in California will have left and the middle class will be left to plug the hole.
So why isn't California politicians stepping up and cleaning up this fiasco?
They probably don't care and see this as a chance to go after the real holy grail of taxation: the collective wealth of the middle class.
Is this, then, why they are so silent?
@AGRobBonta @CAgovernor Sue to stop this ballot from ever making the November vote and immediately start convincing everyone that left California to come back...
Quoted context
These are the quoted author’s words.
Collectively, the amount of Billionaire wealth that has left California in the last month (!) is now in excess of $700B.
That means the $2T of California wealth they expected to tax is now down to $1.3T and falling quickly. I would not be surprised if 2026 ended with less than $1T of billionaire wealth in California and decades and hundreds of lawsuits.
A complete and total unforced error. Where was the Governor? Where are our leaders??
If they don’t kill this ballot initiative and entice those folks to come
back, the California budget will be massively upside down.
Only place to get the money is to cut waste, fraud and abuse or increase taxes on the middle class.
The latter is much simpler than the former.
chamath ↗