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Home – California Politics & News – Newsom Wants the Jacobins Cheering and the Billionaires Staying

Newsom Wants the Jacobins Cheering and the Billionaires Staying

Gavin Newsom has discovered the limits of his own revolution.

After the California governor’s opposition failed to keep a union-backed wealth tax off the ballot, he had to explain himself to voters he has spent years training to believe billionaires are the problem.

There, in the same political breath, Newsom opposed a California billionaire tax while calling for a national billionaire tax. Same target. Same moral language. Same argument about concentrated wealth. One difference: the national tax helps Newsom audition for president, while the California tax might make his own billionaires leave.

That is why the California initiative is dangerous to him. It takes him seriously. Newsom is not opposing the tax because it violates his principles; he is opposing it because it proves them.

Nationally, Newsom wants Washington to tax the ultra-rich as part of a grand “economic reset.” Billionaires, he says, have too much power. The tax code favors them. Concentrated wealth threatens democracy. America needs a new bargain.

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But when a California ballot measure proposes a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California billionaires, Newsom suddenly becomes Milton Friedman with better hair.

Now incentives matter. Now tax policy affects behavior. Now capital is mobile. Now wealthy people are not a captive herd tied to the Capitol lawn, waiting to be........

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