Billionaires spent $378 million to defeat Prop. 40, exposing a rift among California Democrats on taxing the rich.
Archiv: Milliardäre / billionaires
California voters reject measure to tax the wealth of billionaires
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California voters have rejected a first-in-the-nation tax on the net worth of billionaires following a contentious ballot fight that generated huge spending by some prominent tech leaders eager to stop their taxes from going up.
The measure’s failure is a win for Democratic leaders who opposed it, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, who may run for president in 2028.
Are the Corporate Democrats Gonna Blow This Again?
For its own survival and that of our republic—and the success of our 2028 candidate for president—the Democratic Party must now reject the neoliberals within its own ranks and makes a forceful argument for returning to the systems of Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Great Society that protected and enriched working class people in the previous cycles.
If Democrats again embrace neoliberals like Rahm Emmanuel (who’s pretty much openly campaigning for the 2028 presidential election), they’ll fail at this critical work and messaging: that could well doom our American experiment in liberal democracy.
Prop 40, the Billionaire Tax Act, Explained | SEIU-UHW
Our solution: Prop 40, The California Billionaire Tax Act
We’re calling on California’s billionaires to step up and pay a one-time, emergency 5% tax to prevent the collapse of California healthcare and help fund California public K-14 education and state food assistance programs. This would protect healthcare jobs and ensure working people and families can get the care they need. The tax would be paid only by Californians worth more than $1 billion — which is a bit over 200 people who hold a combined wealth of $2 trillion.
California could become the first state to tax billionaires’ wealth
The “no” side has raised roughly 10 times as much as the “yes” side, thanks in large part to tech moguls and venture capitalists, who have poured millions into a political action committee fighting the measure. Billionaires are already bracing for its approval. Some of them, including Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, started cutting ties with the state after the measure was unveiled. Mark Zuckerberg said he would stay in California for eight years and made a deal with Meta that would help him pay the tax without losing his ownership stake in the company.
Zuckerberg, Altman, other Big Tech moguls among attendees at Trump-Xi dinner
President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a state dinner Thursday, whose guest list is full of tech billionaires and some of the world’s most powerful business leaders.
Dressed in black tuxedoes, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were among the corporate elite invited to attend the dinner, according to a guest list released by the White House.
Hold Your Nose And Vote
DeSantis is telling Republicans who are frustrated with their party’s candidates to vote for them anyway lest the DSA take the country “back to before the time of the American Revolution.”
Referring to GOP candidates as less-than-perfect, the governor insisted that the alternative is worse. State Rep. Angie Nixon, a DSA member, secured a major upset victory in August to become the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in November.
(…)
Fox News writer Amanda Macias announced that Democratic Socialists of America are “seeking to reshape some of the most basic features of the U.S. economy.” She then proceeded to lay out DSA’s core platform: universal healthcare, free public universities, student debt cancellation, a 32-hour workweek, and collecting higher taxes from the wealthy.
Macias’s framing of the benefits of socialism reads like the wish list of anyone who is horrified by rising healthcare costs while buried in student debt and working insane hours to keep their head above water. In the end, she asked the same tired question posed by so many critics: who’s going to pay for it all?
A new fleet of F-35s never draws that question.
U.S. Net Wealth Is Over $135 Trillion. Here’s Where That Money Resides.
(Sept 13, 2023)
At the Private and Public Sector Entity Levels. (In trillions of U.S. dollars)
PRIVATE SECTOR:
Households 121.9
Nonprofits 8.6
Noncorporate businesses 17.2
Total U.S. Private Sector 147.7
PUBLIC SECTOR:
Federal government – 21.3
State and local government 11.5
Total U.S. Public Sector – 9.8
Instrument discrepancies – 1.1
TOTAL U.S. WEALTH 136.8
‘Thinking He Can Fool Everyone,’ Newsom Backs One Billionaires Tax But Not Another
(June 26, 2026)
“The misdirect here is that Newsom is opposing a WEALTH tax on billionaires in his own state and insisting he supports a new national INCOME tax on billionaires. But billionaires make money off non-income sources.”
Democratic socialists eye 2028 White House race
(June 25, 2026)
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are eyeing a 2028 presidential bid in the wake of recent electoral successes across the country.
DSA Co-chair Ashik Siddique told The Hill in a Thursday interview that the organization has more than 100,000 members and 200 chapters across the country. “We want people to be talking proactively about what they would want to see in a presidential campaign,” he said. The organization is looking to see how voters would engage and what would motivate them, he added.
California billionaire tax headed for ballot despite top Democrats’ opposition
The push to put a billionaire tax to a popular vote in blue California has exposed deep divides on the left, even as Democratic politicians across the country rally around calls for the wealthy to pay more. The issue is pitting the populist mood of the public against many Democrats’ fears that the measure will push the ultrawealthy to join a broader exodus from the state and take their tax dollars with them.
Gavin Newsom fails to stop California’s controversial billionaire tax from going to voters
(June 25, 2026)
SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West President Dave Regan refused to back down on the billionaire tax.
Gavin Newsom moves to neutralize tax on billionaires
(January 12, 2026)
The conversations, reported here for the first time, have occurred intermittently for months as SEIU-UHW’s ballot initiative targeting billionaires migrated from the backrooms of California politics to the center of a raging debate about Silicon Valley and income inequality, sparking tech titans’ wrath and vows to move out of state.
“We’ve been at this for four months,” Newsom said in an interview with POLITICO, describing an “all-hands” effort that has included him meeting one-on-one with SEIU-UHW’s leader, Dave Regan.
A compromise does not appear imminent. A union official cast doubt on the possibility of a deal, saying the two sides do not currently have another meeting scheduled and framing a ballot fight as an inevitability.
California Billionaire Tax Act
Our solution: The California Billionaire Tax Act
We’re calling on California’s billionaires to step up and pay a one-time, emergency 5% tax to prevent the collapse of California healthcare and help fund California public K-14 education and state food assistance programs. This would protect healthcare jobs and ensure working people and families can get the care they need. The tax would be paid only by Californians worth more than $1 billion — which is about 200 people who hold a combined wealth of $2 trillion.
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American ‘Oligarchy’ Decried by Biden Gained $1.5 Trillion in His Term
(January 16, 2025)
The very richest Americans are among the biggest winners from President Joe Biden’s time in office, despite his farewell address warning of an “oligarchy” and a “tech industrial complex” that threaten US democracy.
The 100 wealthiest Americans got more than $1.5 trillion richer over the last four years, with tech tycoons including Elon Musk, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg leading the way, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The top 0.1% gained more than $6 trillion, Federal Reserve estimates through September show.
U.S. Net Wealth Is Over $135 Trillion. Here’s Where That Money Resides.
(Sept 13, 2023)
At the Private and Public Sector Entity Levels. (In trillions of U.S. dollars)
PRIVATE SECTOR:
Households 121.9
Nonprofits 8.6
Noncorporate businesses 17.2
Total U.S. Private Sector 147.7
PUBLIC SECTOR:
Federal government – 21.3
State and local government 11.5
Total U.S. Public Sector – 9.8
Instrument discrepancies – 1.1
TOTAL U.S. WEALTH 136.8
Exclusive: UK adopts SpaceX‘s Starshield for military operations, sources say
(June 2, 2026)
Britain has begun using SpaceX‘s militarised satellite network Starshield, according to two people familiar with the matter, making it among the first countries outside the United States to adopt Elon Musk‘s government-focused variant of Starlink.
Starshield, developed for the U.S. government, is designed for military and intelligence missions with enhanced security features, while SpaceX‘s standard Starlink broadband service is aimed at consumer and commercial use.
Exclusive: Pentagon spars with SpaceX over Starlink price hike during Iran war
(May 26, 2026)
The ongoing disputes, which have not previously been reported, underscore how the Pentagon’s growing reliance on SpaceX is handing Musk greater leverage over a critical layer of U.S. national security – at a time when SpaceX is seeking to boost revenue ahead of an IPO next month that could be among the biggest in history.
Unlike consumer Starlink terminals available at stores including Walmart, SpaceX sells a military-specific version called Starshield to the Pentagon under a 2023 agreement. Starshield terminals can connect to both commercial Starlink satellites and a separate, more secure constellation, also called Starshield, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Starlink Has Privatized Geopolitics
(March 20, 2026)
Starlink is far more than a commercial connectivity service. It is strategic infrastructure that increasingly shapes how wars are fought, how states manage internal unrest, and how criminal networks operate in ungoverned spaces. What makes Starlink so politically consequential is not just its globe-spanning reach but also the governance model behind it.
A private company is now a gatekeeper in orbit, helping decide who connects as well as where, under what conditions, and with what technical constraints. In a growing number of conflicts, these decisions carry military and political effects that states struggle to replicate or control. If many strategic supply chains now depend on private firms, Starlink is an unusually concentrated case of private discretion over public security functions.
U.S. Net Wealth Is Over $135 Trillion. Here’s Where That Money Resides.
(Sept 13, 2023)
At the Private and Public Sector Entity Levels. (In trillions of U.S. dollars)
PRIVATE SECTOR:
Households 121.9
Nonprofits 8.6
Noncorporate businesses 17.2
Total U.S. Private Sector 147.7
PUBLIC SECTOR:
Federal government – 21.3
State and local government 11.5
Total U.S. Public Sector – 9.8
Instrument discrepancies – 1.1
TOTAL U.S. WEALTH 136.8
The Case for California’s Billionaire Wealth Tax
(May 26, 2026)
A California ballot initiative that will be put to voters in November would tax just 5 percent of billionaires’ fortunes over five years. This trailblazing wealth tax would be a small (for the ultrawealthy) but important (for everyone else) step toward raising needed tax revenue and curbing the state’s runaway inequality.
The billionaire class in California includes roughly 250 households, a mere 0.001 percent of the state’s families. Yet its wealth now amounts to more than half of California’s entire annual economic output.
This means that if these billionaires spent all of their wealth, they could buy more than half of the goods and services produced in a year in the entire state.
Tom Steyer for Governor of California
Yes, Tom Steyer is a billionaire. But it matters what he is doing with that power: pushing for taxes on the wealthy, expanding universal programs, and dismantling corporate influence in our politics.
This is also about winning.
In a high-stakes race where Republicans could take the top spot, consolidating behind a candidate who is both values-aligned and building momentum is essential. Our organizers on the ground in California are seeing real energy around Steyer for Governor — and that grassroots engagement helped drive this decision.
Our Revolution, Nation’s Largest Independent Grassroots Political Organization, Endorses Steyer
(April 20, 2026)
SAN FRANCISCO – Today, Our Revolution, America’s largest grassroots independent political organizing group, announced its endorsement of Tom Steyer for Governor of California, joining a surge of prominent endorsers getting behind Steyer’s campaign as early voting approaches. Our Revolution was founded as a continuation of Bernie Sanders’s historic 2016 presidential campaign and works to mobilize voters and elect progressive candidates across the country. In the coming months, it will mobilize its more than one million Californian members to organize and volunteer in support of Steyer’s candidacy.
In California, Vote Against the Forces Destroying Democracy
It is painful that the one person who has spent the past decades aggressively supporting democracy, fighting for immigrant rights, fighting the tendency toward oligarchy in our politics, and challenging the fossil fuel industry is himself a billionaire. But the facts are that Tom Steyer will not veto the billionaire’s tax, has pledged to support closing the Water’s Edge Tax loophole, and has pledged to not take fossil fuel money.