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We're finally starting to tax the rich. Can it last?

16 0
yesterday

“Tax the rich” is more than just a quippy slogan – it’s a promise that the working class will ensure that the richest people in the United States pay their dues and help improve life for the rest of us.

In some parts of the country, it’s being put into practice.

The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West has proposed a 5% tax on assets in California for people who are worth at least $1.1 billion. On April 26, union leaders announced they had enough signatures to get the initiative on the ballot – meaning that, come November, Californians could decide to tax about 200 of the wealthiest people in their state to pay for health care and education.

You know, things that improve life for everyone there.

As you would expect, billionaires aren't very happy about being taxed

Yet, as you might expect, billionaires in the state are losing their minds at the mere thought of having to pay a one-time fee for a lifetime of hoarding wealth.

“I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union,” Sergey Brin, one of the cofounders of Google, said in a statement to The New York Times. “I don’t want California to end up in the same place.”

Brin was so disgusted with the tax that he moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe to get out of paying it. Yet the concern that every single billionaire in California will flee the state is ridiculous, and the ones who do clearly don’t care about their neighbors.

This tax – which again, would only apply to people........

© USA TODAY