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.
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 🙏
Many families are going with less because everyone is pulling together to help those who are really struggling.
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.
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.
