Out here we've got a saying about family reunions: everybody agrees on the potato salad until somebody asks who's paying for it. California Democrats just found out they're the same way about billionaires.
Proposition 40, on the Nov. 3 ballot, would slap a one-time 5% tax on Californians worth more than a billion dollars. That's roughly 200 to 250 people. You'd figure a deep-blue state would pass that faster than the sheriff's nephew passes his road test. Instead, it's wobbling like a diner stool with one short leg.
The latest Citrin-Politico poll has it at 46% yes and 43% no. Short of a majority with ballots already in the mail. A Nestpoint poll has it losing 54.6% to 34.1%, which the pollster calls a 22-point swing since August. A Manhattan Institute poll has it down 50 to 35. Prediction markets put its odds under 30%. That's not a campaign. That's a casserole nobody's touching at the potluck.
Now, who's against it? Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Democratic nominee to replace him, Xavier Becerra, too. Newsom says billionaires will just pack up and move, so instead he wants a national wealth tax on everybody worth more than $100 million. His plan to keep rich folks from leaving California is to make sure there's no place left to go. That's like fixing a leaky roof by moving the whole town under one big tarp.
He's also backing Proposition 42, which would cancel Prop 40 and ban new taxes on personal property for good. Prop 42 was bankrolled by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. So the governor's position on the billionaire tax is the one paid for by a billionaire. Around here we call that letting the fox write the henhouse bylaws.
Who's for it? The California Democratic Party, which voted to endorse it. So the party's for it, and the party's top two guys are against it. That's not a big tent. That's a tent where the poles are suing each other.
Rep. Ro Khanna backs the tax and accused Newsom of not wanting to cross the billionaires who fund his campaigns. Then the unions showed up and split down the middle like a church over the new hymnals. AFSCME, the Teamsters, and the California Labor Federation are in. The California Teachers Association is out. Here's my favorite: SEIU's healthcare workers in the West put the thing on the ballot, and the statewide SEIU won't take a position on it. That's like baking a pie for the fair and then refusing to say whether it's yours.
Meanwhile the money's already walking. The tax was pitched at up to $100 billion. Estimates have since dropped to about $30 billion, and some economists figure lost income taxes from billionaires who leave would wipe out the gain. Seven billionaires have already moved, according to Stanford economists. The tax hasn't passed. It might never pass. The billionaires left anyway, which takes a special kind of talent. Most towns have to actually raise taxes before people start loading the U-Haul.
And somewhere a regular California family is reading their ballot guide at the kitchen table trying to figure out which Democrat to believe. The good news is it doesn't matter. Whatever they pick, at least one Democrat will tell them they're wrong.
So that's the California wealth tax: a plan to soak the rich that the governor won't drink, the unions can't agree on, and the billionaires escaped before it even rained.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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