A new group is advertising a “March for Billionaires” in San Francisco on Saturday.
It’s either a Swiftian attempt to parrot Silicon Valley executives who are raging against a planned California billionaire tax, or an earnest attempt to ward it off.
“Vilifying billionaires is popular. Losing them is expensive,” reads the group’s website, which is scant and gives no indication of who is behind the effort. The site links to BlueSky and X accounts — the latter is @ProBillionaires — and records show it was created on Jan. 29.
Organizers say the effort is very real.
“We sincerely believe what we’re saying,” the organizers wrote in a message. “We think most American billionaires have had greatly positive societal impacts, directly and indirectly. We support wealth creation and oppose rent-seeking/extraction, anticompetitive practices, and regulatory capture.”
The organizers said they were staying anonymous due to backlash “and some threats” online, but that they were not taking any money from billionaires or “outside groups.”
The goal, they said, is to challenge anti-billionaire perspectives by “highlighting their contributions,” and to fight the billionaire tax, which “would be particularly harmful to the startup economy.”
The group’s language mimics tech executives who have been railing against the “Billionaire Tax Act,” which is being put forth by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and would institute a one-time wealth tax on those with a net worth over $1 billion.
The measure has yet to qualify for the ballot but, if successful, would tax billionaire residents 5 percent of their wealth.
SEIU-UHW says the tax would help backfill about $100 billion in “cuts to federal healthcare funding” and affect roughly 200 billionaires. The measure has received the backing of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, California Rep. Ro Khanna, and the Teamsters California union. Khanna is working on a compromise measure.
Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it. The state office that analyzes legislation wrote that the tax would likely add “tens of billions of dollars” to the California budget, but could result in ongoing tax losses of “hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year” if billionaires flee the state.
Silicon Valley is rising up against it. President Donald Trump’s crypto czar David Sacks called the measure an “asset seizure” and has reportedly left for Texas. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said the tax would “wholesale destroy business creation” in the state.
Anduril founder Palmery Lucky (net worth: $3.6 billion) said he could be “screwed for life” and would be forced to “sell huge chunks” of his stock.
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have relocated dozens of limited liability companies and other business entities outside of California, and Brin has given $20 million to a political action committee that may fight the tax. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel has given $3 million to a similar effort.
The site calls billionaires “value creators” who are “building, not taking” and lists 10 of them, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Page and Brin, the popstar Taylor Swift, the tennis champion Roger Federer, and James Dyson, who the site says “invented the bagless vacuum cleaner after 5,127 prototypes.”
“These billionaires didn’t steal from you,” it reads. “They created new products, new services, new possibilities that millions of people freely chose.”
On Bluesky, the group has shared Y Combinator founder Paul Graham’s well-known essay calling for a fight against poverty rather than inequality, and a post from Matthew Yglesias that reads, “It’s time to take a bold stand in defense of America’s oft-maligned billionaire class.”
It retweeted a post from Tan where the CEO is wearing, unironically, a shirt that reads, “We should have more billionaires.”
The in-person march is marketed for Feb. 7 at 11 a.m. It will start at Alta Plaza Park, in tony Pacific Heights, and end with a rally at City Hall.
In November, a “People Over Billionaires” march took a similar route through the wealthy area and stopped to chant in front of multi-million dollar homes: “Let’s stop these money grabbing maniacs from wrecking our world!”
David Sacks was chased out of SF? Great start! Most of these billionaires do not even live here and yet think they have a right to buy our elections. Hell no to that, they can go.
I politely express my disapproval of David sacks and declare that his decision to leave San Francisco is a reason to be happy!
“We sincerely believe what we’re saying,” the organizers wrote in a message. “We think most American billionaires have had greatly positive societal impacts, directly and indirectly.”
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That’s arguable but even accepting the claim arguendo, the issue is that the rewards they have reaped are way, way out of proportion to any positive societal impact. Jeff Bezos made shopping more convenient, that’s all. Sure, he should have nice things, but why should he be among the world’s wealthiest? He didn’t cure cancer.
“We support wealth creation and oppose rent-seeking/extraction, anticompetitive practices, and regulatory capture.”
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That’s nice, but the people you’re shilling for definitely do not oppose rent-seeking nor anticompetitive practices. I mean, that’s how they became billionaires.
Almost every one of the billionaires is kissing up to Trump. Sam Altman, Marc Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Greg Brockman, Sergei Brin. We have pictures of them with Trump.
These people made the Bay worse and the world worse. It’s a slam dunk to vote to tax them.
Also, all of the billionaires wannabes of OpenAI are taking our parking spots. Why not make them feel unwelcome?
Here’s a place where YIMBYs and NIMBYs can agree: if you lower housing demand, prices drop. Let’s push all these companies out of town.
And did I mention: more parking spaces!
According to Forbes, 83 billionaires backed Harris versus 52 billionaires that supported Trump during the election.
I think what is misunderstood by a group like this (Newsom included) is that society, communities, and working-class people are asking billionaires to be conscious of solving community problems. Ask yourself, can we solve hunger? We have all the technology, money, and supply chain to do so, but billionaires don’t. They prefer to buy another home, another McLaren, and keep the systems in place as they are. Wait, Jeff B. prefers to pay 30M+ to Melania to have access.
It’s not that billionaires don’t contribute; it’s that they extract after they have created/contributed, and many have leveraged the systems in place that we pay for to achieve. What ever happened to what is decent, moral, and just the right thing to do?
So part of that platform is opposition to rent seeking. I’ll be damned. With all those rent seeking extraction oriented billionaires, I’d have thought they loved it .
I guess renters can stop paying and the billionaires will threaten to leave the state if anyone tries to evict or sue for back rent.
What is wrong with the concept of rent? Do you ever rent a car? Why is that wrong?
According to the save the suffering billionaires’ platform, THEY don’t like rent. I was channeling their generosity when I assumed they would hate all landlords (and perhaps by extension, all banks that charge interest on the loans they make(.
astroturf comes of age. Billionaires raise the cost of everything for everyone else just through their interaction with the local economy. The ONLY metric that tracks with housing cost is average regional income (yes, not quantity of houses, not how easy it is to build, nothing else).
So, while most of us in California are struggling with soaring rents, rising food and energy costs, small businesses struggling to find employees, and a massive homeless and drug crisis, somehow the “victims” are the billionaires. The nerve, the ignorance, and the sheer selfishness is mind-blowing. These are the same people who have powerful government lobbyists, that have benefited from cheap labor, low taxes, and public infrastructure… and yet they feel “robbed” by a tax that would barely make a dent in their wealth? Power drunk – money hoarders is what they are!
I’m considering going tongue-in-cheek, because defending billionaires is like “foreign sweatshops are good, actually” — seemingly ridiculous statements that you actually come to believe when you’ve studied economics. Maybe an ironic pro-landlord rally can happen next. Our city’s moderates deserve marches too!
My message to the billionaires is this: Tell y’all what; you can be billionaires once no one’s living in poverty. Billionaires have the most resources, so put your unbelievable amounts of money where your mouths are and PROVE your assets aren’t just sinkholes where the public good goes to die. If the rich allegedly make California so great, why do we still have food, health, housing, and job insecurity here? Get serious about being members of society, shorties.
In 2022, Massachusetts voters approved a millionaire’s tax. Annual 4% tax. Not only did the tax fill its coffers for healthcare and education, but the number of millionaires have increased. Just exactly how can these billionaires explain why they need so much wealth while so many are without basic necessities (housing, healthcare, education, clothing, food)? California, be like Massachusetts.
Important to note that MA does not have a wealth tax as the ballot initiative is proposing. Their “millionaire’s tax” is simply an additional tax bracket for income in excess of $1 million dollar. The top tax bracket for a MA tax payer subject to the “millionaire’s tax” is 9%. In CA, the top tax bracket is 12.3%.
If I only have $100 mil, can I lash together 9 more centi-millionaires and march as a centipede, like in Bay to Breakers?
This has got to be satire. No billionaire left behind. These people are like mosquitoes.
Sergey Brin is in the Epstein files. Whatever else he has done in his life doesn’t matter if he is a pedophile or knowingly associated with one.
How much are they paying people to attend? Do marchers get more than bystanders? Do I get a bonus if I bring my kid? How about my dog? Do I have to make a sign or will there be plenty on hand? Have they rented City Hall in case it rains? Sorry, my bad. They own City Hall
We can’t take the importance of our billionaires for granted – it might hurt their feelings.
How will we all get richer if billionaires don’t have more of our wealth then everyone who is middle-class or poorer combined?
These creeps never give up. The latest billionaire-backed astroturf group is the HeyThereNeighbor app, with flyers posted up and down the Haight.
Would not be fair to say that if top 0.1% were to be taxes at 50%, and that given to the bottom 50%, the bottom 50% would effectively double their wealth?
Of course there’s all sorts of inequities in that (what about the $100-Milion-aires who night then be ewealthier that the Bs?). And or course for some, their negative-net worth would only be half that.
Still, it sure makes for an interesting meditation.
The one-time tax is to help cover a huge amount of lost funding for Medi-cal and SNAP cuts. Billionaires can eat, they can get medical care, they need to understand they can help others who are struggling to survive in this state, and billionaires can still survive just fine.
Talking about wanna be billionaires ( one who bankrupted 4,5 or 6 casinos without paying the contractors”), the Orange/deranged one, in charge of the ex-republican party, now a cult, despite having his Gestapo, is going to have to close the Kennedy center for 2 years for “renovations” (with your american $!) since all decent/intelligent artists cancelled their appearance at the place that he tried to make his own..What’s happening? Kid Rock or Ted Nugent cannot fill the house for the next 3 years? how saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaddddd!
Let them have “their” day, the poor little billionaires who tried hard to fit in, who go to Peru to try Ayahuasca so they can get “close” to the real ancestral values (lol), they have detox clinics, they make sure their kids don’t have a phone too early so they are not too messed up later..pffft be kind to them..just bring some Tar and Feathers.
It really is weird all the chaos these guys inflict just to try and deal with the same emotional challenges we all face. Elon and his dad, Jeff and his dad, etc etc. you almost want to pity them.
Finally someone realizes all YOUR public services wouldn’t be funded without billionaires taxed income! 🤡
I would rather march for billionaires rather than march for illegal aliens.
Ok see you in the streets chief
Sorry, but it’s the “rich” that produce the wealth, the jobs, the opportunities, the products, and the services. As another commenter mentioned, I’ve never been hired by a poor person. We should be grateful that we live in a country that produces so much wealth and so many rich people—a rising tide, etcetera. Life is not easy for people in poor countries. I don’t know what the statistics are for SF, but in NYC the top 1% pay 48% of the taxes. The new communist mayor there wants to raise taxes even more for the rich, many of whom are now fed up and starting to leave for more hospitable states. Even the stock market is step by step relocating to Texas. Is that what we want to do in SF? All the armchair Marxists here on ML crack me up.
The real point is that if all the ultra-rich leave, then taxes will have to go up on the rest of us. And then there are the lost jobs – no poor person ever hired me.
@Tom, the only way a rich person hires you is if you’re his pool boy. The rest of us, we all get hired by poor people. The only reason fast-food workers have jobs is because poor people go there to eat. And the only reason attorneys have jobs is because fast-food companies bring them lawsuits, but fast-food companies exist only because poor people go there to eat, so either way, it’s poor people driving the employment. Why would a rich man hire you? Can you groom a poodle?
That is some amusing, inside out, upside down reasoning. Apparently you are claiming that all the companies providing all the products and services that people want are owned by the poor! Amazing! In the last few months my old TV died. I bought a new one. Is LG owned and run by poor people? Last month I bought a new bicycle from a company started and run by poor people, I guess, who hire other poor people to work for them. Tremendous! Finally, if people are eating at fast food places, they’re not that poor. McDonald’s is no longer a low budge place to eat. As for myself, I agree with the earlier commenter—I’ve never been hired by a poor person.
Bicycle riding, tv using until it dies, abuser defending confused person alert. If you don’t own a yacht you are not on their side.
First, taxing unrealized gains is not just stupid, but illegal. Second, will money be given back for unrealized loses? No. Third, please name the last “one-time tax” that was indeed a one-time tax.
Taxing wealth seems a whole lot less stupid and illegal than many of the things the billionaires seem to support.