Sergey Brin spends $100 million to crush California’s wealth tax
By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit ·
Sergey Brin and tech billionaires are pouring historic sums into defeating Proposition 40 to protect their fortunes, proving that our democracy currently bows to private wealth.
When billionaires buy the ballot We see a billionaire throw a tantrum with money he took from us. Sergey Brin co-founded Google and holds an estimated net worth of $257.1 billion. According to Politico, Brin called government a “giant bonfire of partisanship.” He then poured roughly $100 million into defeating Proposition 40 in California. That is a proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaire assets. He is now the biggest individual donor to a ballot measure campaign in California history. He is purchasing a veto over the democratic will of millions.
The mechanics of concentrated power As The Guardian reports, the opposition campaign spends more than $1 million a day. They have raised a staggering sum overall to crush the measure. Tech overlords are panicking because Proposition 40 would fund healthcare and education. SEIU-UHW introduced the tax to replace federal healthcare funding cuts. Eric Schmidt chipped in more than $42 million to help Brin. These men prefer to hoard their wealth in private family offices. They even backed Proposition 41 and Proposition 42 to invalidate the tax.
This fight follows the mechanism of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That ruling allowed unlimited private wealth to drown out the democratic will. In 2010, Supreme Court justices opened the floodgates. They promised that independent spending would not corrupt our politics. They lied. Today, centibillionaires use massive family offices to rewrite the rules of survival. Brin moved limited liability companies out of California to dodge the tax. He also attended Donald Trump’s inauguration and took an appointment to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
A democracy or a billionaire's bank The opposition has flooded the airwaves with deceptive ads. CBS News notes that Stanford economists published a study claiming the tax might drive out billionaires. This gives the elite academic cover for their greed. A thriving society requires public spending on health and education. We cannot let a handful of billionaires live tax-free while workers suffer.
The stakes go far beyond California lines. Bernie Sanders called Proposition 40 “the most important ballot initiative in the country.” Billionaires would rather fund shady opposition campaigns than pay their fair share. The Great Resignation taught my generation that the system is rigged. We remember the 2008 crash that took our neighbors' homes. Tech oligarchs spend a million dollars a day to starve public services.
Brin and his wealthy peers are terrified. They fear California will light a spark for the rest of the nation. They want to nip this threat in the bud. They fear a working class that realizes we outnumber them. We cannot let them buy our elections. Every voter carries the weight of this historic pillage. True justice requires a system where billionaires finally pay like the rest of us.