California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a nationwide tax on billionaires as part of a broader “economic reset for America.”
Newsom, who is considered to be a 2028 presidential contender, also reiterated his opposition to a state-level wealth tax that Californians will vote on in November.
He also called for creating a “national public equity fund” to help “ensure every American owns a stake in the future being built by AI.”
We don’t even need a billionaire’s tax for an “economic reset”. I mean, we do because it’s not healthy for our economy or our political system. But what will happen with a billionaire’s tax? The money will just go to the government, which will spend it in arcane ways that the average person has little visibility or voice on.
What we need is an increase to the minimum wage to whatever it would’ve been if it hadn’t been consistently frozen and re-frozen and with mandatory CoLA, universal healthcare, repeal of Citizens United, repeal of whatever decision it was that said a company’s ultimate responsibility is to shareholders, a breakup of a whole bunch of overweighted conglomerates, a breakup of media empires, a ban on “entertainment” masquerading as “news”, a reform of the Supreme Court, vetc. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff as well. But there’s a whole bunch of stuff that could get accomplished without a billionaire’s tax.
Taxing billionaires would benefit regular people even if the government burned the money. Or buried it. It would reduce the price of assets, like housing, and make them more affordable for regular people.
Sure, it would be better spend the money on healthcare or infrastructure, but even if we just subsidized the underwater basketweaving industry, we would still be better off.