This is insane:
Potential California ballot measure from the health care union, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the people said. The proposal calls for California residents worth more than $1 billion to be taxed the equivalent of 5 percent of their assets.
If the measure gains enough signatures to reach the state ballot in November and wins approval, it will retroactively apply to anyone who lived in California as of Jan. 1, 2026. Those with $20 billion in assets who resided in the state on that date would face a one-time tax of $1 billion and have five years to pay it, according to the terms of the measure.
Applying retroactively (my emphasis) is wild. This kind of thing feels like a trick -- and it applies to unrealized gains.
Whether the proposal will reach California’s ballot is far from certain, but some billionaires may be unwilling to take the risk. For Mr. Page, whose net worth is estimated at $258 billion, the measure could result in a one-time tax of more than $12 billion. The tax bill for Mr. Thiel, whose net worth is around $27.5 billion, could be more than $1.2 billion.
But what's really insane is the way they justify it:
Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff at S.E.I.U.-U.H.W., said the organization was trying to fill a funding gap for the state’s health care industry. “We looked at how could we generate the revenue to fix this kind of hole, and this group of folks just made sense,” she said, adding that California billionaires were the “most fortunate people in this state.”
So, you steal money from people because you can?
I'd be shocked of this thing makes it to the ballot, and more shocked if it passes. But it seems like the damage is already done. I certainly would bail on California if they were going to tax me like this.
See, this is what happens when healthcare becomes the #1 industry. Healthcare in America might be the most inefficient industry (along with defense contractors, i'd reckon). The only way for it to keep growing is to extract resources from other sectors. Mark my words, as health becomes a greater and greater fraction of the US economy, the economy is going to get more and more sclerotic.
Healthcare also has a bit of a trump card feel to it: who wants to be the one to say it costs too much to save (extend) this person's life, or that much needed procedure isn't worth the cost for you. There's always a way to phrase a call for new healthcare spending so that you can't morally say no to it.
Which is a great reason why we should take as much decision-making out of the hands of the government as possible. Morally coercive rhetoric only works when we're trying to allocate communal resources; when each person decides for themselves, it isn't as effective.
That's the underlying rationale for all taxes (and basically all other forms of theft).
Yeah, I suppose the idea of "non-theft" taxation is that it is self imposed. We have the phrase "no taxation without representation" because it implies that taxation with representation is consented to and therefore not theft. Maybe there was a world where this was true, but it doesn't much feel like it anymore.
Definitely in the case of this proposed tax, it feels very much like theft, and it caught my eye because of how blatantly the person in the quote was willing to say it.
Representation doesn't make any taxes just (minor caveats excluded) but it does alter which taxes are feasible.
I like this mindset, but I have questions:
Are use taxes just?
How about tariffs?
What is your preferred method for funding a government?
Since taxes are involuntary by definition, I don't think they can be just. Since they are involuntary, my preference is that they be as avoidable as possible: i.e. only on luxury/sin goods.
Tariffs on goods between private parties are certainly unjust, but when one or both parties are state actors (or other criminals) it becomes less clear.
I'd prefer the government not be funded and just go away. If I can't have my top choice, then I think funding it through fines and fees levied against legitimately criminal acts is the best way to fund it. Taxes and fines on antisocial behaviors, narrowly defined, would be the next best.
Edit: On the representation note, I'd also say people shouldn't have to pay taxes unless the person they vote for wins and they're in the ruling party.
It might not pass this time but I fully expect we will see something like this pass in the next decade.
So what do you think will happen to bitcoiners twenty years from now?
Probably all living in Texas.
In the end, this will just become a boon to CPAs who will devise all sorts of schemes to reduce / eliminate "gains"
The issue that the lawmakers have (besides being commies) is that these sorts of simplistic ideas are full of all types of loopholes they never envisioned....and generally high dollar private CPAs are smarter than dumb lawmaker staff....
There is another potential here: The goal is to drive out the wealthy....they know they are going to get $0 from this scheme but they have some secondary goal of forcing mega wealthy to declare their domicile in a different state for other purposes (ie. exit tax, forced sales of existing assets, etc)
In intrigued by your idea that the goal is actually to drive rich people out of the state. I think the main reason there might be getting rid of competition -- maybe the bureaucrats and politicians in CA feel threatened by tech billionaires, and so rather than losing to them in politics, they are just trying to force them out of the state.
I find it less plausible that the backers of this bill are able to accurately predict the economic outcomes of this bill.
Yeh, it smacks of "secondary goals".
It's a non-issue. Most of the rich people in Cali live in Nevada or Hawaii.