They freak out about this because their wealth is in holdings and isn’t liquid. They leverage debt and play these games to avoid paying their share the freeloading welfare queens that they are

This is probably more painful than “it’s just 5%.” And I love that for them

Its way cheaper for them to buy the politicians, and these people will never miss an opportunity to optimize the number in their bank account. The system won’t change without some serious turbulence.

I posted this comment on another topic but it's relevant here too:

The sick part is that what is being asked is actually so inconsequential to the billionaires that not only will their line still go up, if we change nothing else but this, even wealth inequality itself will still keep going up, it will just go up at a slightly less supersonic speed. They don’t even care about the amount of money we’re asking for, they care about the precedent that if we can take this from them, what’s stopping us from taking everything from them.

That’s what they’re actually scared of. That’s why they resist this so hard. That’s why they don’t bend. They think that once the people slip out of their stranglehold they will get a taste of billionaire blood and they will like it.

And they might be right.

Even a 2% ANNUAL wealth tax would not take anything away from them, it would just make their wealth grow SLIGHTLY SLOWER.

In our next lives we should all strive to make sure THAT NO ONE HUMAN HOLDS THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

Financial obesity is neurotoxic, an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but trillionaires should be forced to transition into billionaires, and billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

I would rather have 1000 millionaires than 1 billionaire

So we can hit them with 5% every month

They remember (or have schools that teach) the 90+% wealth tax back when accountants hadn't hidden it all. You know, in the 1950s and before 'boomer golden age', which, along with strong unions, made the middle class happen. and what shall never again happen if the parasite class can help it.

It’s literally impossible to allow this to continue. Something will give.

Billionaires should be illegal. That's wages stolen from the workers.

Shareholder primacy is fundementally broken. We must tie ownership back to the direct stakeholder of each firm. Shareholders dont care about goods, services, or utilies; they only care about line go up.

People who are cool with not having the maximum amount of money possible don't end up billionaires

I misread it as 31 years ago. But when I saw 31 days I was like... And of course they are opposed to it!

Sadly I predict this won’t pass. The traditional media like tv commercials is flooded with propaganda to vote no on this. Newsom, Becerra and Hilton are all saying to vote no (that should be the biggest clue that you should vote yes) The commercials offer different and conflicting narratives as to why you should vote no (another clue you should vote yes) And there are NO commercials telling you to vote yes. (That should be another clue, those who control the media do not want this.) The only news available telling you to vote yes is Bernie Sanders visiting California for some sort of rally. But those supporters also tied in props 41 and 42, pushing for a “no” vote on those, which I think might have been a mistake and hurts their message.

The math is a bit counter intuitive, but increasing by 5% then decreasing by 5% of the new value does not get you back to the start exactly.

You take a value v, increase it by 5% to 105% of the previous you now have 105% * v. Now you take that new values as the basis for the next calculation, and decrease by 5% to 95% of the previous, you now have 95% * 105% * v which is actually 99.75% * v.

You need to find the day from which their wealth increased by 5.263% so that a 5% tax would bring them back.

But yeah, whatever it doesn't make a material difference to the argument. A one time tax sounds a bit weird to me, but I don't live there, Californians should do whatever they can. Maybe a one time tax is a good first domino stone.

Great message, but that graph is horrible...

I like an echo chamber dogpile as much as the next guy. But doesn’t prop40 also use language that can be taken advantage of? Like to expand this tax to other areas?