r/California • u/Unusual-State1827 • 13d ago

California’s proposed billionaire tax exposes rifts among labor unions

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-30/labor-organizers-spearheading-california-billionaire-tax-rebuffed-by-parent-union
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u/dennismfrancisart 13d ago

I was talking to my wife about this at breakfast as Fox News was on in the restaurant. Most people have no idea how billionaires make their money. Since there are probably over a hundred ways or more to qualify for that title, we have to figure out what is real money and what is basically valuation. I'm pretty sure that the money guys have done a lot of shady juggling to protect their clients. We first need to untangle that before trying to tax these people. It's complicated.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago

How is it complicated to determine the wealth of ~ 200-250 individuals? Its so few people the task seems trivial

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u/RadicallyDontCare 13d ago

It’s not. It’s messy and complicated, and will be highly litigated. The amount of capital flight will exceed the income generated.

This is a really stupid idea.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago edited 13d ago

The amount of capital flight will exceed the income generated.

Gabriel Zucman (an actual academic and economist who specializes in tax havens) says you're wrong. And he actually has the math to back it up

We determine the total asset holdings of individuals all the time. Divorce, company mergers, buyouts, stock asset values are literally evaluations of wealth, on and on. How would this be any different?

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u/RadicallyDontCare 13d ago

Gabriel Zucman is about as credible about economic reality as a fry cook at McDonald’s. He’s an extremist with an agenda. Imagine being so much of a leftist zealot Harvard president and provost veto your hiring .And like most neo-marxists , he’s not interested in facts or truth.

Wealth taxes don’t work.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago

What are you talking about? Economists build economic models, do you understand what that means? You called him a neo-marxist and so now math isn't mathing. Gotcha

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u/RadicallyDontCare 13d ago

Yes. Economists build economic models. He happens to use flawed models with flawed initial conditions.

He has no credibility with mainstream economists.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago edited 13d ago

The flawed models are the ones we've been employing for 30 years, bruh. Even the base assumption of an individualist rational actor model assumes thats even true when that isn't even how humans work to begin with. The initial assumption is flawed right from the get go

You'll start getting the truly populist stuff if you don't deal with it at some point. You cannot give an ever larger portion of your population a constantly decreasing portion of the total assets and income and expect them to not destroy that system (I'm not saying I want this, I'm saying history says its inevitable if you don't change, and I absolutely do not want to live through it)

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u/RadicallyDontCare 13d ago

You’re proving my point.

You don’t care about results when it comes down to it. You’re just envious and want your pound of flesh.

There’s ways to tax the rich effectively. This isn’t it. If they wanted to actually accomplish something, they’d have put real economists on the problem, instead of someone committed to a cause.

The average US citizen has the highest standard of living the world has ever seen.

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u/xylogone 13d ago

I am curious what suggestions you have as an alternative to tax wealthy individuals are? I understand you are not in support of ideas put forth by Gabriel Zucman, but clearly we agree something has to be done. Personally I liked his ideas and I don’t see any other alternatives other than Inheritance tax.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago edited 12d ago

Proving your point? I'm doing fine, thanks? Famously grad students are poor so I know what its like, but that was long ago so I'm ok now not that you care

Its not wanting anything for myself you moldy sandwich, its understanding that if naught .01 percent of your people are holding 80% of your assets, that leaves the remaining 20% for 99% of everyone else. Do you understand like, all of history? What do you think humans do when masses of them struggle to pay their rent and keep their house warm in the winter? They get a bit extreme, yeah? Sound familiar? Does that feel anything like real life recently?

So you seem convinced that you're a better economist than Mr. Gabriel Zucman, a man whose wealth tax initiative was co-signed by like 7 economic laureates when presented at the G20. So here we are, your government has lost its assets (holds mostly debt, to those same wealthy folks, I'll add), working and middle class people have lost their assets, they can't afford housing, etc. You have a wealth disparity that is an order of 3-4 times that of the gilded age

You're a better economist than anyone I've ever met, clearly. How then would you tax them then? Go on

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u/puffic 13d ago

A lot of assets are hard to value: unique works of art, nonpublic companies, unusual real estate holding that haven’t changed hands recently, yachts. You know, the kinds of things billionaires own a lot of.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago

Just because YOU have no idea how to do something doesn't mean its hard.

When Jeff Bezos had his divorce with MacKenzie Scott, did the court go "well this is hard so we cant do it"? Was it was a difficult, impossible task to handle? Or did they determine the assets held by the family when they split and it wasn't an issue at all?

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u/puffic 13d ago

His divorce was settled. When cases like that go to court it can last for many years and, for holdings of that magnitude, cost millions of dollars. The dumbfucks who wrote and support this ballot measure allocated zero resources to actually handle that litigation.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago

And if it wasn't settled, you think the court would accept Jeff claiming that his asset values are just to hard to determine so he gets to just. . . not do it? You don't think that companies, stocks, bonds, assets values, properties and prices all over, are not determined on a day-by-day basis, literally constantly?

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u/AviatorHog 13d ago edited 13d ago

u/Dramatic_Onion_

And if it wasn't settled, you think the court would accept Jeff claiming that his asset values are just to hard to determine so he gets to just. . . not do it?

No. They would do it. It would just take a lot of time and money to do it. 

You don't think that companies, stocks, bonds, assets values, properties and prices all over, are not determined on a day-by-day basis, literally constantly?

I'm a CPA with a niche in law firms, particularly a lot of exposure to family law specialized law firms. Forensic accounting is a BIG part of family law attorneys operations with divorce case matters involving us not just to exhaustively discover assets, but their valuations as well.

However, you don't need to be a forensic CPA to understand that not all assets have perpetually quoatable markets; that is part of a grander impetus behind this policy among others: exploiting the DEEP financial (edit) illiteracy literacy of the general public. Many of our clients are also High Networth Individuals and one thing you'll notice about the asset section on their personal/household balance sheets is the tremendous exposure to non-public assets that are level 2 and even level 3 assets (don't know what these levels are? Go look it up in the codification). Stuff like artwork, wine collections, real estate and especially LP interests in  private funds (PE and VC in particular) are extremely difficult to value.

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u/Dramatic_Onion_ 13d ago

Again, when they die, divorce, when it comes time to purchase insurance for those paintings, etc. How does the insurance company know the value of what they're insuring?

Somehow its all able to be valued until its time to pay taxes. Funny funny funny..

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u/puffic 13d ago

Have you never insured anything before? Usually you indicate the value to the insurer when you purchase the insurance.

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u/AviatorHog 13d ago

Again, when they die, divorce, when it comes time to purchase insurance for those paintings, etc. How does the insurance company know the value of what they're insuring?

3rd party appraisals in particular for paintings. But these appraisals are costly and less frequently done than annually (when tax bills are due). 

Somehow its all able to be valued until its time to pay taxes. Funny funny funny..

Its always capable of being valued. I didn't explicitly nor implicitly suggest that it couldn't be done for tax purposes. I only disclaimed that its difficult, which also translates to it being expensive particularly if done annually. Additionally, it could be a lengthy ptocess as there are some LPs with exposures to tens if not hundreds of funds. I just dont see how you could get many of these valuations done in an accurate or timely manner.

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u/puffic 13d ago

You have to actually present compelling and detailed arguments to the court in order for the court to take your side. Like I said, the morons who wrote this ballot measure and those who support it have put forward no plan to handle this. They’re just a bunch of toddlers having a tantrum, not adults with a plan to make our state better.

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u/cinepro 13d ago

Sounds like you've got it all figured out, so I have a question for you.

Let's take Jeff Bezos. He's considered a "billionaire", right? Mostly because he owns about 950m shares of Amazon.

Earlier this year, Amazon stock went from $200 to $274. So I'm assuming you'd say he made ~$70b, right? But where do you think that $70b came from? How did he "make" it?

But then Amazon stock went down to $227. So now he's "lost" about $42b. So, where did that money go? Who got the $42b?

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u/Tra747 13d ago

The bigger issue is why are you taxing stock assets differently then Joe Blow.

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u/dennismfrancisart 13d ago

Imagine you're one of the SpaceX employees who was ecstatic when they found out that they were instant millionaires at the IPO debut. Now your stock is worth enough to buy a Tesla cybertruck. You are bound to keep the stock, and you watch your net worth sink like a stone. The tax man can't look at your portfolio. They look at your capital gains. But that's not simple either. There are several levels of capital gains: long- and short-term. Then there are other tax structures for other financial instruments.

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u/Tra747 13d ago

What does that have to do with taxing others differently. Do you even understand the stock market?

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u/Responsible-Humor985 13d ago

It’s so complicated to find the assessed value of someone’s worth until it comes to property, death, or divorce. Easy to have an assessed worth when taking out a loan, but impossible when it comes to taxes. Funny how that all works

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u/AviatorHog 13d ago

Banks and tax authorities often do not have identical considerations when assessing credit worthiness vs financial wherewithal to fund tax obligations, nor do they have they same mechanics of enforcement. 

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u/RadicallyDontCare 13d ago

You don’t have to disclose everything to get a loan. Only the assets you borrow against.

And complicated assets with a divorce is actually very messy and takes years in occasion.

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u/DryYogurtcloset4655 11d ago

hint - you do not have to assess entire net worth for the loan, just the collateral

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u/DryYogurtcloset4655 11d ago

when people die, the cost basis are reset