11/18/25

We see that a major union announced a proposal to impose a “one-time” 5% tax on billionaires in California to address federal funding cuts to health care for low-income people. The tax would be on the net worth of California’s richest residents. This opens the door to a wealth tax which would be pretty tempting for Sacramento to make permanent and then put on a sliding scale for all taxpayers, not just the billionaires. Remember that only 1–2% of the population were targeted by the original federal income tax in 1913 and in 5 short years ten times as many households were liable for the tax. And, here at home, in 2012 Jerry Brown backed the supposed “temporary” Prop 30 income tax increase to 12.3%, slated to expire in 2018, only to have it extended in 2016 to 2030 by Prop 55. Vampire Taxes never die.