California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) on Friday called for a national tax on billionaires. Except, in the original version, it was anyone with a net worth of at least $100 million - as quoted by multiple outlets, citing a post from Newsom's Substack account.
As originally reported by Politico:
His plan to address the country’s yawning wealth gap includes “a true minimum tax on billionaires and those with a net worth of $100 million” and creating a national public equity fund to give all Americans a stake in the economic gains created by artificial intelligence companies.
The post now reads:
"So here is what I support: A national billionaires’ tax. A true minimum tax on billionaires — a modern Buffett Rule — that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay."
Bitch please.
Newsom also wants to tax inheritance - writing "We also need to rewrite our inheritance rules. Over the next twenty years, this country will live through the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in human history, with roughly $124 trillion changing hands. If we do not act, that transfer of wealth among the ultra-wealthy will lock in a permanent American aristocracy of inherited wealth, with all the political consequences the founders warned us about."
Notice he cites the massive wealth transfer, but not the level of inheritance he's targeting - as most slippery slopes begin.
Newsom's proposals come after he failed to stop California's legislation from with placing a state-level wealth tax on the November ballot.
Newsom’s proposal follows a failed attempt by the governor, billionaires and progressive groups of persuading the union behind the California tax, SEIU-UHW, to withdraw the measure before Thursday evening’s deadline. Newsom had even privately expressed assurances about an agreement, telling a wealthy donor he expected to negotiate the measure off the ballot, Bloomberg News previously reported. -Bloomberg
"For Newsom, it’s the worst of all worlds, because it puts him squarely in the middle of a national Democratic debate about equity, taxation and affordability," said Steven Maviglio, a veteran Democratic strategist in the state. "His announcement might deflect from that a bit."
Newsom also suggests creating a public equity (slush) fund that would 'take a stake in the artificial intelligence economy.'
Shockingly, California's billionaires aren't exactly excited about all this tax malarkey. In fact, while the anti-tax coalition has been most prominently linked to billionaire Sergey Brin (who's funding other ballot measures that could nullify a wealth tax), Planned Parenthood of California and several labor unions are weirdly also against taxing billionaires - arguing that the proceeds from the tax would benefit select groups, while potentially damaging the entire state's budget because wealthy residents will flee.
Even they know it's just a slush fund.
"We are ready to defeat this convoluted nightmare of a measure in November," a spokesperson for Golden State Promise, a group backed by billionaire Chris Larsen, told Bloomberg, while a different coalition linked to doctors and school boards called California's proposal a threat to "vital funding for education and schools, healthcare and clinics, public safety, and infrastructure projects."
Either way, Democrats continue to actively scheme for ways to extract more money from capitalists.