California’s Proposition 40, on November’s ballot, would levy a one-time 5 percent tax on the net assets of the state’s roughly 200 billionaires — raising about $100 billion, most of it to keep Medi-Cal afloat after federal Medicaid cuts. It qualified with 1.6 million signatures and has labor’s endorsement. Ben Case’s essay tracks what the other side built in response: the world’s first lobby whose only client is the billionaire class.
What Sergey Brin’s machine has done:
- “Building a Better California” has raised $150 million-plus, mostly from Brin alone — who would owe about $9 billion under Prop 40 while adding roughly $100 billion to his wealth in the past year
- Expected ad spend of $90 million-plus, around eleven thousand times Prop 40’s current budget, on top of flooding the signature-gatherer market and two poison-pill initiatives (Props 41 and 42) to nullify the tax
- Newsom — after a reported holiday-party chat with Brin — vowed to defeat it; its first ad is working-class themed and mentions neither the billionaires nor the friendship
The escape-route argument is the flimsy one: after Massachusetts’ 2022 millionaire’s tax, millionaire counts rose and revenue beat projections. Thiel, Brin, and Page’s relocations look mostly like paper moves. Mark Cuban just said the quiet part — he’d refuse to invest in any California company if Prop 40 passes.
Prop 40 forces a public conversation about wealth, which is exactly why the counter-lobby exists. As Case frames it, the fight isn’t only over a tax — it’s over whether billionaires stay society’s unquestioned decision-makers. November’s ballot will be the first referendum.