Deep Inside the Chaotic Politics of the California Billionaire Tax

The pitched battle between billionaires and populist economists has Golden State residents’ heads spinning.

Out here in California, Democracy is a monthslong slog. The state effectively began engaging in big-D Democracy sometime around January—that’s when California’s ballot measures were gathering signatures. Every time you went to Ralphs or Vons, you could linger outside in the perpetual sunshine, pick up a box of Girl Scout cookies—and scribble your signature onto the latest ballot initiative.

The people gathering those signatures are often gig workers, paid for each John Hancock they wrangle. They carry around armfuls of paper (usually collecting signatures for four or five ballot initiatives at once), and they’ve learned to lead with the most popular measures. A Californian hurrying through a milk run won’t always stop when asked to sign your petition to create an immunology research institute at the state university, but they might stop if you ask them to sign on to an easy-to-explain and broadly popular initiative like Voter ID or Prohibiting New Retirement Taxes. Their ears may especially perk up when they hear the signature hustlers mention this year’s billionaire tax.

“Have you signed the billionaire tax yet?” was a popular refrain outside my local Ralphs. They’d buttonhole you with that or with the ballot measure prohibiting new retirement taxes, which sounded just as simple until you asked to see the language. I remember reading the retirement tax initiative and feeling uncomfortable; it was too wishy-washy. What’s this here about prohibiting new taxes on the worldwide value of my intellectual property? Are California’s firefighters and nurses really at risk of retroactive taxes on the future value of their 401(k)? I had the curious sensation that I was being astroturfed. Turns out, I was.

The Retirement and Personal Savings Protection Act is one of six billionaire-backed measures, three of which are aimed at defanging the billionaire tax. All these measures are funded by Building a Better California, the $80 million nonprofit bankrolled by Google founder Sergey Brin, who has thrown a $40 million tantrum over the notion that he may have to pay the billionaire tax. A spokesperson for Building a Better California didn’t want to speak on the record, but Brin’s been telling the governor and every reporter who’ll listen that he’s leaving California and taking his toys with him. Why, he’s even threatening to move the company that manages his 466-foot-long superyacht out of the Golden State, per The New York Times.

There’s a dystopian (and distinctly American) paradigm on display here, a scene akin to performance art: Gig workers sweating outside grocery stores, collecting signatures to keep billionaires from paying taxes. Those same billionaires insist they’d rather leave than pitch in to help keep afloat the system within which they built their empires. Sergey Brin built Google while on a taxpayer-funded grant from the National Science Foundation.........

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