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Liz Perlman, executive director of AFSCME 3299, representing 25,000 healthcare workers, said, "Hospitals are closing and people will die. Why? So billionaires can get another tax cut that they don't need. It's immoral and needlessly cruel. This measure does one thing: It rights that wrong.
"Being taxed like everyone else will not hurt the billionaires," she said. "It will not reduce the number of yachts they get to waterski behind. But it will help our hospitals and the workers who have been unfairly punished by Trump's cruelty."
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California have come out in favor of the proposal. On March 2, the pair co-introduced their own proposed legislation, the "Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act," which would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on billionaires to help expand social welfare programs.
The campaign says the tax on the 938 billionaires in America—who are now collectively worth $8.2 trillion—could raise $4.4 trillion over 10 years.
Who are the California billionaires?
Thanks to being the country's technology hub, California is home to more billionaires than any other state, who together hold roughly $2 trillion in wealth. Among them are four of the world's wealthiest people: Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and Alphabet's Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index.
Huang has been sanguine about the possible upcoming dent in his bank account, telling Bloomberg Television: "We chose to live in Silicon Valley and whatever taxes, I guess, they would like to apply, so be it. I'm perfectly fine with it. It never crossed my mind once."
Huang, 61, the world's seventh-richest person with a net worth of $180 billion, according to Forbes, has reportedly spent roughly $55 million on piecing together an impressive real estate portfolio, which is said to include a $38 million mansion on San Francisco's Gold Coast and a $6.9 million home in Los Altos Hills near Nvidia’s headquarters, according to Mansion Global.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Google/Alphabet co-founder Brin, who has poured at least $45 million into efforts backing competing initiatives that would cancel out the proposed billionaire tax, such as a measure that would ban retroactive taxes and ban new taxes on personal property, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Brin, who is worth $264 billion, according to Forbes, making him the fourth-richest person in the world, reportedly owns a $50 million Malibu, CA, estate that he picked up in 2022. However, he has also lately decamped to Florida, snapping up a new $51 million Miami megamansion on Allison Island.
If the new proposal passes, Brin would get whacked with a $13.2 billion tax bill (at his current estimated net worth) no matter where he lived, provided he lived in California as of Jan. 1, 2026.
Along with Google co-founder Page, who picked up two Miami mansions for $173 million, Brin has reportedly been moving some Alphabet entities and assets from California to Florida.
Palantir and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, with an estimated net worth of $27.5 billion, shifted some of his family investment firm's operations from California to Miami in late December.
Thiel's company is still headquartered in Los Angeles, and he owns a home in the Hollywood Hills, but a press release announcing the opening of his new Miami office stressed that he has owned a residence in the city since 2020.
In late December, just before the Jan. 1 deadline, venture capitalist David Sacks opened a satellite office for his firm, San Francisco–based Craft Ventures, in Austin, TX.
Zuckerberg also recently bought a home in Miami, shelling out $170 million for a megamansion on Miami's "Billionaire Bunker" island—just three doors down from a staggering compound owned by fellow tech tycoon Jeff Bezos.
Zuckerberg also owns $112 million worth of homes in Palo Alto, and there is no news that he has sold them.
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