Spirits, for the most part, were high in the San Francisco Hibernia’s Beaux-Arts halls on Monday, where a who’s who of wealth tax champions gathered at the “US vs Billionaires” summit in the grand old building at the junction of Jones, Market and McAllister.
But a lingering concern for many attendees was the logistics of passing Proposition 40, the California billionaire tax: Ballots started going out that same day to California’s 23 million registered voters, and most of them will need to make a sequence of deliberate choices to pass the tax: They need to mark “Yes” on Prop. 40, and “No” on Propositions 41 and 42.
If Prop. 40 gets more votes than Prop. 41 and Prop. 42, the billionaire tax survives. But it will fail if either 41 or 42 gets more votes. So — one “Yes” and two “No’s.”
Even at the conference of progressive authors, researchers, lawmakers and think tank leaders who came from different parts of the state and country, some did not know that was the case, and many more were worried: 25 guests told Mission Local they were not confident voters had gotten the message. The question caused some to shake their heads or groan over lunch.
“We need a jingle — an earworm jingle of some sort for advertisements,” one guest proposed to his table during a panel break. Oakland musician Mistah F.A.B. knew this much two days earlier, rapping the ballot instructions, “Yes on Prop. 40, no on 41 and 42,” to a crowd that had come to see Sen. Bernie Sanders at the Curran Theater on Saturday.
Those at the table exchanged nods and affirming grunts.
“I have said ‘No on 41 and 42’ to Uber drivers, to people randomly standing in line for things,” said Frank Jernigan, a retired Google millionaire and co-founder of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of the rich agitating for wealth redistribution. “Almost nobody I have talked to knew about it before.”
The Hibernia conference featured a series of on-stage panels hosted by a group called Excessive Wealth, with everyone from Rep. Ro Khanna to anti-billionaire millionaires rousing a room of proponents for American wealth redistribution over the course of eight hours.
California political ‘machine’
Prop. 40’s opponents have backed the two other “poison pill” ballot measures. Those measures would sink the tax if they get more votes. Prop. 41 prohibits new state taxes that exclude revenues from the state spending limit, and Prop. 42 prohibits new state personal property taxes and certain retroactive state taxes.
The confusion is intentional, most supporters said. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent $328 million on the campaign to kill Prop. 40 and back the other two measures, according to campaign finance filings. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, which is leading the pro-Prop. 40 coalition, has spent $38 million so far this year by comparison, filings show.
A New York Times list of recent polling shows more Californians generally favor the wealth tax, but most polls showed support at less than 50 percent as of Tuesday.
Prop. 40’s fate will to some extent shape the long-term political course of the guests who had gathered near the civic center.
Speakers included San Francisco Supervisors Bilal Mahmood and Chyanne Chen and “The Nerd Reich” author Gil Duran.
The wealth tax has notably faced opposition from Gov. Gavin Newsom and his would-be Democratic successor, Xavier Becerra, who’s running against Republican Steve Hilton in November.
Not only has Newsom broken with the California Democratic Party on opposing the measure — he’s become as prominent an opponent as the billionaires, arguing the state faces heavy losses to its tax base, and thus its funding for services like schools, should billionaires choose to leave California. The San Francisco Democratic Party changed its bylaws, in a rare move, to buck the state party and vote to oppose the wealth tax in August.
Rep. Khanna of San Jose has in recent days railed against Newsom over his efforts to kill Prop. 40. He’s also considering a run for president in 2028. During the Monday conference’s fireside chat with pro-wealth tax billionaire Tom Steyer — the failed Democratic primary contender for governor — Khanna broadened his targets to a California political machine that he said frequently goes against voters’ wishes.
“California is a machine-dominated political state. They brag about it … they still like to revere [former San Francisco mayor] Willie Brown … the Getty Machine. You know why I speak the truth? It’s because [House Speaker Emerita] Nancy Pelosi, who I respect, endorsed against me three times when I ran for Congress … Ron Conway … this whole cabal … Xavier Becerra is part of this machine,” Khanna said.
All the panels on Monday sought to answer this question: How do you wrest power from the billionaires and put it in the hands of working people? Those talks supplied a number of eye-popping statistics, including this:
By the conference’s sixth hour, the combined wealth of the world’s richest individuals grew by $4 billion, as purported by a live tracker run by the event’s organizers.
Actually, Prop 43 is also anti-tax.
So left-wing extremists who think that more tax is the solution to every problem should vote Yes-No-No-No.
For the rest of us No-Yes-Yes-Yes works.
Thank you. Billionaires don’t pay anything close to a fair share and is precisely what the proposition will do-tax billionaires a one time 5% tax. Hardly fair share, and no, not a ‘more tax solution’. Unless you’re a billionaire?
The top 1% pay 42 % of Federal taxes. that they don’t pay their fair share is a vicious and dangerous Marxist lie. By the way, the lower 50% pay a pathetic 4% of federal taxes. Those 50% get plenty of value for next to nothing. There are no wealthy people left in Cuba. They all left and now Cubans are starving. Marxism is the absolute road to hell and Marxist threats of violence illustrate what monsters these greedy people really are.
Why are the money folks always so shady?
“All the panels on Monday sought to answer this question: How do you wrest power from the billionaires and put it in the hands of working people?”
The answer is staring us in the face: a three-letter word that starts with T. Far less messy than guillotines.
One needs to preface the three-letter word “TAX” with a critical seven-letter word “FEDERAL” in order for a proposed “billionaire tax” to actually work.
Yes, most Californians likely favor a “billionaire” tax, as well as a more fair and and simpler tax system that redistributes in order to reduce wealth inequity and fund a workable social safety net system, but they also understand that this can only be effectively accomplished at the Federal level.
The (so-called) “progressives” keep proposing (so-called) “solutions” that fail to work and most Californians are tired of this “failure to deliver”.