cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/54152859
Proposition 40, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on California billionaires to help fund healthcare, appeared headed for defeat, though votes were still being counted.
Opponents raised hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the measure, far outspending supporters, who argued the tax could help offset federal healthcare cuts.
The campaign also faced opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom, teachers, business groups and others, while voters weighed concerns about taxing assets and the possibility that billionaires could leave California.
It was this election’s reminder that people are dumb as shit.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful wave, but my personal belief is that it was due primarily to gas prices. That people are dumb as shit is not a belief at this point. And average ass bastards refusing to tax BILLIONAIRES is pretty solid proof of that.
This is absolutely the stupidest fucking outcome for prop 40, genuinely. No, it was not and is not perfect. But literally any downwards wealth redistribution is an objective good, full stop. Anyone who voted for this who isnt, at poorest, a few tens of millions away from being a billionaire, is an abject idiot.
literally any downwards wealth redistribution is an objective good, full stop
Not if you spend all your political capital doing so. We need a nation-wide wealth tax. A one-time wealth tax in a single state is basically a payment for the wealthy to leave the state. They’re given more than enough time between the vote and enactment of the tax to establish residency in another state
It’s about chipping away at the monolith. It’s not about perfection. The effort will continue regardless. Prop 40 never included the provision of “let’s stop here and not go any further”.
Can somebody devil’s advocate this for me? It would take months for a billionaire to recover from a 5% tax but the benefits would go on for decades.
My understanding:
That thing about many poor Americans considering themselves “temporarily embarassed billionaires”
Plus
If everyone gets healthcare then people who “dont deserve it” get it too, and it becomes harder to feel “better than” others
Plus
A terrifying amount of people believe advertisements based on saturation alone without critical thought
Why the fuck would teachers oppose a billionaire tax?
Because it’s poor legislature. The long-term effect would be less taxes on billionaires
It’s too easy to dodge, and it being poor legislation would be used as an excuse not to tax billionaires in the future
The rich Hollywood elite should pay their fair share. Except for Tom Hanks. He is a national treasure! /s
Americans should pay a “Thanks” tax with all the proceeds going to Tom Hanks. Shit, everyone should pay that tax, not just Americans.
After all, why would you want a small group of powerful people who hate you and work to destroy your quality of life to leave your state?
Finally the people start caring for billionaires again 🙏
People really forget how good we had it when we had only like 4 billionaires. Thats when small businesses thrived and we had so many options for everything. Now only a handful of stores
Personally I don’t believe we have enough culture wars and social division. We need more of that stuff bombarding us from every media outlet possible, just as the billionaires like it. That’s why they bought up mass media— so they can reach us 24/7 with their enlightened takes on humanity and community.
Who wants a return to the days we had decent infrastructure, convenient public transportation, and well-funded education? Not me! Who are we to stop billionaires from using their excess money to buy politicians and Supreme Court justices, and the endless lawyers needed to lobby nonstop for preferential treatment. If they want to destroy the occasional environment or pay to rape a child once in a while— well they’re so rich they earned the right! Way to go CA— never let billionaires lose their stranglehold on society!
We have to keep trying. We have to fight wealth inequality.
Many families are going with less because everyone is pulling together to help those who are really struggling.
First they came for the billionaires, and I did not speak out, because I was not a billionaire.
(That’s sarcasm with a capital S just to be clear)
Then they came for the billionaires and I spoke out because wont anyone think of the poor billionaires?
Probably because a “one-time” thing isn’t sufficient.
It needs to be a continuous thing. Make them pay their share just as we pay our share.
When one tire is low in your car do you put air in it as a one time thing until you replace it, or do you not waste your time?
Irrelevant. And stupid.
You just bitch and wait until you can afford 4 new tires. Got it.
Yeah it should have been called a 2027 tax, and informed people they can vote on it again as many times as they want.
How
The ads were nonstop and only showed the anti-wealth tax side. And there were 3 ballot initiatives that would poison any individual attempt to levy a new tax. They pulled out all the stops and there were at least 4 high profile billionaires behind it who don’t normally put themselves in the spotlight. Two Google founders and the money behind the investors behind andreessen horowitz.
And there were a few likely involved but not named like Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook. The anti taxers also had the close connections with business leaders to create unusual endorsements like the Planned Parenthood partner and some Democrats. Gavin Newsome, the governor of the state and big figure in the liberal opposition to Trump, was very vocal.
The good news: this is the same state that was swindled out of gay marriage by a very duplicitous campaign and a few years later reversed hard with a constitutional right-to-marry legislation. California will be talking about this and ready when it comes up again.
I would like to believe that but we also approved prop 42 which prevents taxes on personal assets. So we would need to repeal that before being able to attempt this again.
The voting guides that I saw people posting on nextdoor (since I live in a conservative part of Cali) described prop 40 as “a tax on ‘billionaires’ and a tax on ‘everyone’”. Literally I saw people saying that they would believe anything that a billionaire tells them over a politician.
This is prop 22 (iirc it was 22) all over again. Back when Uber and lyft convinced Californians to exempt them from calling their drivers employees.
The argument that people seem to be sticking mostly with is that any tax on a billionaire is a slippery slope to tax regular folk. Despite abundantly clear how narrow the measure is, people have been sweating up and down that the billionaire tax is “how they’ll get you”
Behind that is a “it’s not good enough so don’t even bother”, but that works be inconsistent with prop 42.
And of course, hundreds of millions of dollars of disinformation and drafting Prop 42 to intentionally mislead to that conclusion tends to do that.
In other words, they’re morons.
The wealthy pumped I think over $300 million into ads against prop 40 and drafted 41+42 to sow confusion about it. As much as I’d like to hold my fellow Californians to a higher standard, it became incredibly murky by design. It doesn’t help that people really worry that billionaires would leave the state (they won’t), and that they’ll uproot their companies and take those jobs away (they won’t).
There’s also a problem that too many Californians see themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires, so there’s that.
Maybe you’re right, we really can be the common clay of the new west.
nobody wants to be victims of a wealth tax
You have to be a victim of wealth first. Most people are safe.
most people know a millionaire and don’t know how massive the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is
That wealth came at your expense buddy.
I would absolutely love to be the victim of a wealth tax.
I have an entire grocery bag of political mailers we I received this year, and almost half of that bag is “No on 40” flyers. My phone was getting 5 to 10 call per night with half those being No on 40, and I stopped even counting the text messages.
Gavin Fucking Newsom worked overtime with his billionaire buddies to make sure the billionaire tax was dead. I don’t understand how people bought into the propaganda, but there are a lot of things people fall for that I will never be able to understand.
I suspect the high turnout in this blue wave election was mostly from former Trump voters turning out to punish Trump and his party. They voted Dem up and down the ballot, but when their actual beliefs are on the ballot (taxation, trans rights) they still vote according to their right-wing beliefs.
