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.
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
I would absolutely love to be the victim 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