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wealth tax
These 22 California Billionaires Don't Want to Pay Their Fair Share
A small segment of the state’s 200-plus billionaires has stepped up to oppose Prop 40, a ballot proposal to tax billionaires, contributing millions to opposition groups and vocally speaking out against the one-time fee.
Oct 01, 2026
On November 3, 2026, California voters will vote on Proposition 40, a one-time 5% levy on the net worth of billionaires who were California residents on January 1, 2026. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs, with the remainder set aside for food assistance and education.
A small segment of the state’s 200-plus billionaires has stepped up to oppose Prop 40, contributing millions to opposition groups and vocally speaking out against the one-time fee.
In a brief report, California’s Billionaire Wealth Surge: Meet the 22 California Billionaires Opposing Prop 40 Billionaire Wealth Tax, we identified 22 California billionaires who are active funders and outspoken opponents of Prop 40. Together they have given over $150 million to oppose the initiative—with more rolling in every day. These 22 include a prince, several private jet flying chums of Jeffrey Epstein, and a bunch of crypto and tech bros designing the AI future for the rest of us.
Thiel’s wealth is 10,759 times the median wealth of a Californian household.
On January 1, 2025, these 22 billionaires had a combined wealth of $439.8 billion. By September 1, 2026, their wealth had grown to $722.1 billion.
In a little under 20 months, their combined wealth increased $282.6 billion, a gain of over 64%.
Just to be clear, these “snowflake billionaires” are whining, wailing, and donating money to fight a tax that would effectively require them to part with one-eighth of the wealth they’ve gained since January 1, 2025.
This group includes Google’s Sergey Brin who has been the single largest opposition donor, chipping in over $102 million to fight Prop 40. Brin has seen his wealth grow a whopping 70% in the last 20 months, from $148 billion on January 1, 2025 to $253 billion on September 1, 2026. Brin’s wealth is 83,498 times the median wealth of a Californian household, which is $303,000.
Palantir’s Peter Thiel gave $3 million to the No on 40 campaign and has called on other billionaires to move out of California. In the last 20 months, Thiel’s wealth increased a whopping 120.27%, from $14.8 billion on January 1, 2025 to $32.6 billion on September 1, 2026 (Forbes). Thiel’s wealth is 10,759 times the median wealth of a Californian household.
Chris Larsen, founder of cryptocurrency firm Ripple, has given over $5 million to the No on Prop 40 Campaign, along with another $5 million from Ripple and $12 million to Building a Better California. His personal wealth increased 23.5%, from $10.2 billion to $12.6 billion in the last 20 months. His wealth is 4,158 times the wealth of the median California family.
Venture capitalist John Doerr gave $10 million to No On 40. In the last 20 months, Doerr’s wealth increased 47.97%, from $14.8 billion on January 1, 2025 to $21.9 billion on September 1, 2026. Doerr’s wealth is 7,227 times the median wealth of a Californian household.
Three of the 20 saw their wealth decline over this 20-month period: Tony Xu, Marc Pincus, and Marco DeGeorge. But most have experienced substantial gains.
California Billionaires vs. the Median California Household
The number of billionaires in California has grown, with their average wealth remaining roughly between $9.1 to $9.4 billion. As of September 1, 2026, the 231 billionaires identified as living in California have a combined wealth of $2.117 trillion. Just 20 months ago, there were 178 billionaires in California with a combined wealth of $1.685 trillion.
To show how quickly billionaire wealth has accelerated since the pandemic, let’s go back in time six years. In early 2020, all 815 billionaires residing in the United States had a combined wealth of $2.9 trillion, only slightly more than what the 231 California billionaires have today in 2026.
Meanwhile, the median net worth of a California household has risen a marginal 5.2% increasing $15,000 from $288,000 in 2025 to $303,000 in 2026. A Californian with $1 billion dollars in wealth has 303 times the wealth of the median California household.
Under Prop 40, this billionaire will pay a one-time tax of $50 million to support healthcare, education, and food assistance for their fellow Californians leaving them $950 million to survive on.
The Under-Taxed California Billionaire
In California, the state’s 231 billionaires (as of Sept 1, 2026) hold approximately $2.117 trillion in wealth ($2.3 trillion as of Sept 22, 2026) and pay incredibly low taxes on their riches.
According to an analysis published by economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, from 2019 to 2025, while California billionaires’ wealth grew an average of over 15% per year, they paid, on average, just 0.26% of their wealth annually in state income taxes. Sergey Brin and Larry Page paid just 0.07% of their wealth annually in California income tax during that period. I guess we can see why they don’t want anything to change.
This analysis was prepared by the Institute for Policy Studies and Tax the Ultra-Rich Now (TURN). More detailed dossiers will be available soon. Press release HERE.
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If You Want to Tax the Rich, Support California's Proposed Wealth Tax
The state needs money to provide essential services. Why not take it from the people who have money coming out of their ears?
Sep 18, 2026
This fall, California residents will be voting on a measure that would impose a tax of 5% on people with wealth in excess of $1 billion. This is a serious tax on a small group of very wealthy people.
While some focus on the amount of tax that these super-rich people will pay, it’s worth keeping in mind how much they will still have after paying their tax bill. A billionaire with $5 billion in assets will pay $250 million in taxes, but they will still be left with $4,750,000,000. We probably still don’t have to worry about these folks collecting food stamps.
The proponents of the tax calculate that it will raise $100 billion. While it is a one-time tax, it can be paid over five years. This sum will roughly match the cuts in Medicaid funding over this period that the Trump administration has put in place.
It is important to recognize that capitalism is an infinitely malleable system. We have allowed the rich to structure it to give themselves all the money. That is a huge problem.
To me, this sounds like a great plan. The state needs money to provide essential services. Why not take it from the people who have money coming out of their ears?
Okay, but we know the real world is never this simple. The rich love their money and aren’t happy about turning over any portion of it to the state of California, no matter how little it affects their living standards. We have to ask how much money the tax will actually collect after the rich use all the tools available, both legal and illegal, to avoid paying.
The podcast Today Explained had an interesting discussion of this issue last week. It included comments from two economists who have done research on this issue: Joshua Rauh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Cristobal Young, a sociology professor at Cornell University. Rauh is a conservative, while Young is a liberal. Both have done serious work on taxing the rich.
Not surprisingly, Rauh opposed the wealth tax. He argued that the tax would end up as a net revenue loser. The tax would apply to billionaires who were in the state as of January 1 of this year, which means if they haven’t left the state already, they will still be liable for the tax even if they choose to leave later. But Rauh argues that the combination of lost future income tax revenue from the billionaires who have already left, combined with reduced collections from the billionaires who stay or don’t come to the state, will more than offset whatever revenue the state collects from the tax.
I take seriously the issues Rauh raises. Some billionaires have left the state. They also are very clever in finding ways to avoid taxes. Rauh did a paper a couple of years back that found that the rich managed to escape paying 60% of the anticipated tax revenue from a 3-percentage-point increase in the top tax rate paid by high-income people.
There clearly is some point where higher tax rates can actually result in less revenue, mostly due to increased evasion and avoidance, but there also is some negative incentive effect (definitely the smaller part of the story). Rauh’s work suggested California might not be far from that point. (Its top marginal tax rate is 13%.)
While Rauh’s view of the wealth tax was predictable, I was surprised to hear that Young also opposed it. Young has done considerable work that finds that rich people do not often move to escape higher state tax rates. It might have been expected that Young would think that the state does not have much to fear from billionaires leaving to escape the wealth tax.
However, Young opposed the tax on different grounds. He argued that the one-time infusion of revenue from the tax, collected over five years, would still leave a funding gap five years out, after the revenue stopped coming in.
This is hard for me to understand. Five years in Trump’s America in an eternity. It is reasonable to think that in five years we may again have a more normal government at the national level that is prepared to actually provide people with healthcare. In that case, the shortfall will not be an issue. Alternatively, if Trump and his followers still hold power, we are likely looking at a disaster story for which there is no real way to prepare.
There are a number of billionaires who very publicly left California before the start of the year and may thereby avoid the tax. This will reduce the revenue collected from the tax and will mean a loss of income tax revenue for the state in future years, but that is water under the bridge at this point.
We can all envision better ways to tax the rich in an ideal world. California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed the state wealth tax because he says we should have a federal wealth tax. Perhaps we should, but a state wealth tax is what’s on the table, and proponents of taxing the rich would be foolish not to wholeheartedly support it.
If the wealth tax goes down, California is not about to institute Young or anyone else’s ideal tax on the rich. If it goes down, it’s a pretty sure bet that it will be some time before another tax on the super rich in California comes this close to becoming law.
I will add that I have long argued that we need to structure the economy differently so that we don’t give the rich all the money. Having shorter and weaker government-granted patent and copyright monopolies would be a good start. Also, changing bankruptcy laws so that private equity partners can’t walk away from companies they bankrupted with their pockets full. And applying a modest sales tax on financial transactions would downsize the sector and eliminate many of the great fortunes on Wall Street.
This is the topic of my book, Rigged (it’s free). It is important to recognize that capitalism is an infinitely malleable system. We have allowed the rich to structure it to give themselves all the money. That is a huge problem. Taxing some of it back is a great thing to do, but it would be even better not to give them the money in the first place. That’s not a reason to oppose the tax, but it would be good if progressives paid some attention to fundamental issues of how we structure the market.
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A Tiny 3% Tax on Global Billionaires Could Save 30 Million Lives by 2030: Lancet Study
"With donor countries facing growing indebtedness and increasingly reallocating resources towards military spending, funding humanitarian assistance via the taxation of large fortunes was one of the most viable strategies."
Sep 15, 2026
With international aid programs facing an unprecedented cash crunch thanks in large part to foreign aid cuts ordered by US President Donald Trump, a recent study published The Lancet suggests that taxing the ultrarich would be the simplest way to plug funding gaps faced by crucial life-saving programs.
Specifically, the peer-reviewed study found that a hitting the world's billionaires with a 3% wealth tax would raise enough money to save up to 29.5 million lives in the world's most vulnerable populations over the next four years leading into 2030.
Lucio Exposito, senior economist of the study and researcher at the ICESI School of Economics and University of East Anglia School of Global Development, told Euronews that a global wealth tax was the most plausible way to undo the damage done by international aid cuts, many of which were caused by billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025 under the direct orders of Trump.
"With donor countries facing growing indebtedness and increasingly reallocating resources towards military spending," Exposito explained, "funding humanitarian assistance via the taxation of large fortunes was one of the most viable strategies."
The study's introduction notes that wealth inequality has reached unprecedented heights in recent years, growing especially acute in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"Today, the top 10% of the global population owns approximately 75% of global wealth, while the bottom 50% holds only 2%, with absolute income inequality steadily increasing over the past three decades," the study explains. "Moreover, the wealthiest 0.002% of the global population... controls an estimated $37.1 trillion in global wealth, surpassing the gross domestic product of the world's largest economy—the USA."
Even as the world's richest people have seen their wealth grow by bounds, official development assistance (ODA) to the Global South has been slashed significantly.
According to a study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released earlier this year, ODA spending in 2025 fell by 23% compared to 2024, with the US responsible for 75% of the global decline.
A 2025 study published by The Lancet estimated that the elimination of USAID would lead to 14 million additional deaths worldwide by 2030.
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Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax
Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel are among the billionaires bankrolling ads against a proposed one-time tax on the wealthiest Californians.
Aug 25, 2026
Organizations backed by mega-billionaires, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and notorious venture capitalist Peter Thiel, have launched an advertising blitz aimed at convincing California voters to oppose a one-time, 5% wealth tax targeting the very richest people in the state.
The two most prominent groups fighting the tax, which will appear on California's November ballot as Proposition 40, are Building a Better California and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes. The former group, funded in large part by Brin, debuted its first television ad on Tuesday, just the start of what's expected to be a massive propaganda push against the proposed tax.
The New York Times reported that the first ad from Building a Better California "emphasizes that unions representing teachers and firefighters oppose the tax, along with the state’s top politicians, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat."
"The ad makes no mention of the billionaires who vigorously oppose the tax," the Times added.
The coalition spearheading the wealth tax campaign is led by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW). The tax proposal has won endorsements from the California Federation of Labor Unions, the California Nurses Association, and the California Democratic Party, along with high-profile progressive lawmakers including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, told the Times that supporters of the tax are "not going to try to compete at all with the billionaires on broadcast television." Brin's group is reportedly set to spend more than $90 million on ballot initiatives this year.
Instead, the Times reported, "the union plans to spread its message through text messages, social media, door-knocking and slate mailers, making the most of the powerful endorsements it recently won from the California Democratic Party and the California Federation of Labor Unions."
Last week, the Thiel-backed group Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes launched an online ad that falsely characterized the proposed billionaire levy as "an everyone tax" and a "Trojan horse."
The ad features a menacing, AI-generated caricature of Sanders and other supporters of the tax, who are shown forcibly seizing residents' property, including a boat, a kid's scooter, and an elderly woman's television set.
1. The billionaires fighting a billionaire tax in California have created an AI-slop ad that shows the tax’s supporters assaulting kids and stealing their stuff. pic.twitter.com/L6PgmfUFAM
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 25, 2026
Journalist Judd Legum, author of the Popular Information newsletter, noted that the "fundamental premise of the ad is false."
"It claims that the initiative’s drafters included a provision that allows them to 'turn the tax on you,'" Legum wrote. "The initiative says that the tax can only be amended by the Legislature through a two-thirds vote of both houses. Even then, any changes must be 'consistent with and further... the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.'"
"The ad claims that 'every Californian will have to report all their assets to the state tax board,'" Legum observed. "Under the initiative, Californians just have to certify that they do not have $1 billion or more in assets by checking a box. This will be an easy calculation for nearly all Californians."
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Establishment Media: Narrow Wisconsin Loss for Hong Is Massive Defeat for the Left
Her defeat was welcomed by conventional media and pundits impatiently awaiting some sign that a wave of progressive victories was finally being halted by sensibly moderate Midwestern voters. But is this accurate?
Aug 17, 2026
Mainstream media voices reflexively advising “moderate” politics for the Democrats have unveiled a comfortably reassuring explanation of the razor-thin 3,796-vote defeat of democratic socialist Francesca Hong in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Her defeat was welcomed by conventional media and pundits impatiently awaiting some sign that a wave of progressive victories—especially by democratic socialists—was finally being halted by sensibly moderate Midwestern voters. Apparently, Beltway observers had no problem discounting left-wing progressives in places including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and most recently with Senate primary winner Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota on August 11.
Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary provided the opportunity to serve up a pre-baked narrative favored by many journalists. Following democratic socialist Francesca Hong’s narrow defeat by just 3,796 votes, “The socialists met their match,” The New York Times concluded smugly. Axios similarly declared, “Hong's loss blunts progressives' recent momentum and hands moderate Democrats a chance to prove their electability.“ For other outlets, too, the central narrative was depicted as a decisive repudiation of progressive politics in a swing state.
This theme was rapidly spread across conventional media despite Francesca Hong’s notable inroads for a combative and visionary brand of fighting for economic and social justice.
But the fact remains—much to the discomfort of establishment media and centrist Democratic leaders—that Francesca Hong got over 311,000 votes, just shy of victory.
But in Wisconsin with Hong’s defeat, mainstream media sources found an opportunity to stretch the real picture to fit their established frame. Rather than a major setback for the spreading success of progressive and democratic socialist candidates across the nation, Hong convincingly demonstrated that Wisconsin has a large and powerful base for innovative progressive policies.
Hong, 37, is a former chef and restauranteur and was first elected to the State Assembly in 2020. A diminutive and soft-spoken Korean American making her first run for statewide office, Hong supplied the vision and energy to build a massive statewide campaign machine while running as an unabashed democratic socialist. She was rightly perceived as reviving the traditions of Wisconsin’s much-revered anti-corporate populist governor “Fighting Bob” LaFollette and Milwaukee’s “sewer socialist” movement that ruled the city for much of the 20th century.
But the fact remains—much to the discomfort of establishment media and centrist Democratic leaders—that Francesca Hong got over 311,000 votes, just shy of victory. This outcome was hardly the momentous repudiation of progressive politics in a key swing state that was frequently portrayed.
Hong demonstrated the broad hunger for policies like taxing the super rich, calling for the termination of school privatization, substantially raising revenues for public schools and urban areas, marijuana legalization, and universal healthcare, proposals that far exceeded what "moderate" Dems in Wisconsin have been offering.
Second, she also showed the power of grassroots organizing as a potent political strategy. She amassed an army of 7,000 volunteers, mostly young people. This youthful infusion of energy seems certain to be a major force in Wisconsin politics to be reckoned with in the future.
Third, where Axios headlined Crowley’s victory as the win of a “moderate,” Crowley explicitly labeled himself as a "progressive" in his TV ads, stressing his pro-labor credentials and his support for “guardrails” on highly unpopular data centers.
(However, while Crowley campaigned as a “progressive,” many progressives are troubled by his opposition to the elimination of education privatization via “school choice,” which transfers funding away from public education.)
Fourth, Hong compiled 311,00 votes in her run for governor and brought in more votes—excepting of course the winner Crowley—than any previous Democrat running in a contested gubernatorial primary.
The excitement ignited by Hong’s bold campaign helped in part to produce a huge Democratic turnout. The Democratic gubernatorial candidates raked in a record 792.009 votes, a level normally attained only in presidential campaigns. Meanwhile, the Republican primary winner Tom Tiffany and a marginal candidate pulled in just 490,819 votes.
While The New York Times and other media have dwelled on the meltdown of her big polling lead on election day, Hong’s strong final results show that her democratic socialist politics were not somehow disqualifying for hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters. The campaign showed an enormous base for policies like taxing the super rich, a $20-an-hour minimum wage, a state-owned bank as in North Dakota, paid family leave, an end to school privatization, and universal healthcare that far exceeded what "moderate" Dems have been offering in the state.
With the pressure of Hong’s ambitious program and substantial lead in polling, Crowley felt compelled to label himself as a "progressive" in his TV ads, stressing his pro-labor positions and criticism of data centers.
Crowley is a Black man who overcame a childhood that included homelessness to rise to become the largest county’s top elected official. After entering the primary, Crowley, becoming discouraged by low poll numbers, temporarily dropped out of the race. But the state’s establishment Democrats pulled him back into the race with promises of all-out support, and they delivered. Top Dems like Gov. Tony Evers almost instantaneously uncapped a gusher of funds fueling a flood of Crowley TV ads in the closing days of the primary.
In her first statewide campaign, Hong found herself hammered in the closing two weeks by a relentless media spotlight on her old social media posts. Carelessly left online by her campaign, these posts—calling for “defunding the police” and criticizing traditional holidays like Thanksgiving—do not reflect her current perspective. But they generated derisive headlines and overwhelmingly unfavorable discussion. With the terrifying specter of the Republican nominee hard-line MAGA acolyte and election denier US Rep. Tom Tiffany eagerly poised to feast on her old social posts and aspirational and ambitious program, even some of Hong’s loyal following seemingly trickled away. This late-arriving erosion was likely enough to tip the final outcome away from her to David Crowley.
Still, Francesca Hong came within 0.5% of access with an aspirational program and an innovative grassroots campaign strategy. Yet the dominant media frame for Hong’s narrow defeat—as supposed proof that serious progressive politics are a fatal formula outside the coasts—has been simmering in recent months. Centrists among leading media voices and top Democrats have uneasily watched a parade of left-wing successes in Democratic primaries across the nation, in states as diverse as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and in Minnesota with the election of Peggy Flanagan.
Although Hong fell just short of winning the primary, she powerfully demonstrated the growing demand for a bolder vision by voters.
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Billionaire Google Co-Founder Pumps $102 Million Into Fighting California Wealth Tax
"Sergey Brin would rather spend $100 million to fund a shady opposition campaign than simply pay his fair share in taxes so millions of Californians don’t lose their healthcare."
Aug 16, 2026
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the richest men in the world, has spent more than $100 million backing a group seeking to stop a popular California ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on the wealth of the state's billionaires.
New filings reported by The Los Angeles Times detail Brin's role in funding Building a Better California, which is pushing two ballot measures that would undercut and potentially nullify the proposed billionaire wealth tax. Building a Better California is also spending directly against the proposed tax, pumping at least $5 million into "no" efforts.
If passed, revenue from the 5% billionaire wealth tax would be used to offset federal Medicaid cuts and bolster the state's education system. The proposal will be on California's November ballot as Proposition 40, and the two billionaire-backed initiatives are Propositions 41 and 42.
Debru Carthan, the vice president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said in a statement that "California billionaire Sergey Brin would rather spend $100 million to fund a shady opposition campaign than simply pay his fair share in taxes so millions of Californians don’t lose their healthcare."
"That’s shameful," Carthan added. "Billionaires already pay much lower tax rates than what working families pay out of every paycheck."
The Sergey Brin group Building a Better California is officially opposing the California billionaires tax — donating $5 million to the “No” push to defeat it. pic.twitter.com/GsP2h9ZhXR
— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) August 16, 2026
Proposition 40 has been endorsed by the California Federation of Labor Unions, the California Nurses Association, and the California Democratic Party, as well as prominent progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
But the measure has drawn opposition from powerful forces in California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the California Teachers Association.
Brin is not the only billionaire financing efforts to defeat the proposed wealth tax in California, which is home to more billionaires than any other US state. Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and venture capitalist Ron Conway have also spent against the ballot initiative.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have estimated that, between 2019 and 2025, California's billionaires paid on average just 0.26% of their wealth each year in state income taxes.
"For the very richest individuals, the effective burden was even lower. The four wealthiest Californians—Mr. Brin, Mr. Huang, Mr. Page and Mr. Zuckerberg—paid an average of just 0.07% of their wealth annually in California income tax over that period," Saez and Zucman wrote. "This trailblazing wealth tax would be a small (for the ultrawealthy) but important (for everyone else) step toward raising needed tax revenue and curbing the state’s runaway inequality."
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The World's First Trillionaire Is a Flashing Red Light for Democracy
Billionaires—and soon trillionaires as well—are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our elections while working Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and healthcare; it’s clearer than ever that those two facts are connected.
Jun 28, 2026
The red emergency light is flashing on America’s democracy dashboard, like a damaged aircraft teetering toward a mountain. Elon Musk becoming the planet’s first trillionaire should make us tremble for the future of self-governing republics. It’s as if we’re bringing back modern pharaohs to dominate our societies.
Musk’s SpaceX company recently went public with a (probably inflated) market capitalization of $2 trillion. SpaceX’s IPO increased Musk’s net worth by an estimated $188 billion, and the stock’s first-day surge subsequently pushed his fortune to roughly $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.
The concern here isn’t with wealth per se. It’s the tremendous power of concentrated wealth to distort markets, politics, and society. When you have Musk’s level of wealth, you’re no longer just buying another mansion or private jet (of which he already has several). You’re buying a media outlet, a senator, and maybe, in the case of Musk, elevating a president.
Musk has no inhibitions about deploying the power of his considerable wealth. He bought Twitter, one of the public squares of our time, and transformed it into X, a partisan and disinformation platform rife with hate speech and extremism.
We need to get serious about curbing this billionaire influence and supporting regular people—starting with a wealth tax.
In the 2024 election cycle, he donated $291 million to President Donald Trump and Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Mother Jones, “Musk expended 0.1% of his wealth in the process and got far more in return.” Mechanic notes “The Trump administration promptly shelved dozens of investigations into Musk’s companies.”
Musk was rewarded with a rogue government agency—the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), named for a crypto meme coin Musk invested in—to advance a self-interested data grab and chainsawing away at government capacity. Public Citizen found that 70% of the agencies that were targeted by DOGE had conflicts of interest for Musk’s businesses. For example, Musk directed DOGE to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would have overseen X’s move to become a payment processor.
More dire still, DOGE cuts to USAID and other humanitarian aid programs have contributed to an estimated 750,000 lost lives. The projected deaths from these cuts run into the millions.
Musk was further rewarded with lucrative government contracts for SpaceX, Starlink, and other Musk-companies. In early 2025, The New York Times reported on a boost in multi-billion-dollar contracts for Musk’s companies as the Trump administration took power.
That was Musk as a “mere” centi-billionaire. What other power might Musk be able to wield as the world’s first trillionaire?
But it’s not just Musk. America’s 16 centi-billionaires (including Musk) have a combined wealth of $4 trillion. And the 977 billionaires on the Forbes US wealth list now own a combined $9.24 trillion, according to analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness.
This isn’t a partisan concern. Whether it’s liberals like George Soros and Tom Steyer or right-wingers like Musk and Peter Thiel, this concentration of power and influence should trigger the flashing red light. It’s never a good thing for anyone to have the power of modern-day pharaohs. Musk was the top political donor in 2024, but five other billionaire households gave over $100 million to candidates.
Billionaires—and soon trillionaires as well—are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our elections while working Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and healthcare. It’s clearer than ever that those two facts are connected. We need to get serious about curbing this billionaire influence and supporting regular people—starting with a wealth tax.
Oxfam observes Musk could give $100 to every person on Earth and remain one of the 10 richest people on the planet. A 10% wealth tax on Musk’s fortune alone, they estimate, could end global extreme poverty and lift 800 million people above the extreme poverty line. Imagine the revenue and investment possibilities of a global wealth tax on all billionaires.
The planet’s first trillionaire is not a sign of economic health. It’s an indicator of extreme inequality and the dangers of concentrated power.
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'Thinking He Can Fool Everyone,' Newsom Backs One Billionaires Tax But Not Another
"The misdirect here is that Newsom is opposing a WEALTH tax on billionaires in his own state and insisting he supports a new national INCOME tax on billionaires. But billionaires make money off non-income sources."
Jun 26, 2026
Critics say that Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to trick voters with his new plan for a national billionaire income tax, while simultaneously opposing a tax on billionaire wealth in his own state.
Along with a coterie of wealthy donors, Newsom has long stressed that he is adamantly opposed to the statewide plan to institute a one-time 5% tax on the total wealth of those in the state with more than $1 billion to fund healthcare, education, and food assistance programs, which has been spearheaded by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW).
But a day after the measure was certified to appear on voters' ballots, Newsom—who is expected to run for president in 2028 and face an electorate that is angrier than ever about the outsized wealth and power of the billionaire class—unveiled a new national proposal that, at least on the surface, seems to hit many of the same populist notes as the one in California.
It's time for a national billionaires tax and a new social contract.
10% of Americans own two-thirds of the wealth. Wages have stagnated. The cost of living has skyrocketed.
The system is fundamentally broken.
The federal tax code, a corporate code, and an inheritance code… pic.twitter.com/tLRbUId6yi
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 26, 2026
"Last night, it became certain that a wealth tax would be placed on the November ballot in California. I’m voting no," he explained in a Substack post, in which he rehashed many of his previous objections—including the factually dubious idea that a wealth tax would supposedly lead to mass capital flight from the state. He also said the plan to spend most of the revenue on healthcare neglects other needs like housing, childcare, and public safety.
As an alternative, he proposed what he referred to as "a national billionaires’ tax. A true minimum tax on billionaires and those with a net worth of over $100 million."
When counting unrealized wealth gains as income, America’s richest billionaires actually pay lower effective tax rates than the average American. A 2025 paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) estimated that the richest 400 Americans paid about 24% of total income in taxes from 2018-20, compared with 30% for the public as a whole.
"That system is the result of decades of loopholes written by lobbyists and upheld by politicians who knew exactly who they worked for," Newsom said. "The wealthy have their own private tax code full of loopholes and exemptions that most people have never heard of, and they’re counting on politicians in Washington to maintain it and keep quiet."
Referencing an idea from the Obama era, Newsom described his plan as "a modern Buffett Rule—that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay."
While he did not elaborate on what rate he'd plan to charge the wealthiest Americans, the original 2012 Buffett Rule would have required that millionaires pay a minimum effective tax rate of 30% of their adjusted gross income (AGI), which includes things like capital gains and other sources of income that are normally taxed at lower rates.
One might assume that such immense wealth translates into equally enormous tax payments.
It doesn't.
According to a study we have just completed, California's billionaires pay only 0.07% of their wealth each year in California income tax—representing barely 0.2% of the state's… pic.twitter.com/87W7y67sXh
— Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) June 26, 2026
While Newsom had borrowed the "billionaire tax" branding of California's popular proposal, critics pointed out that he was proposing something vastly weaker.
"Read his Substack post carefully," implored Lever editor-in-chief David Sirota in a social media post. "He’s talking about income taxes and closing a few loopholes, but not a national version of the WEALTH tax on the ballot in California."
"The misdirect here is that Newsom is opposing a WEALTH tax on billionaires in his own state and insisting he supports a new national INCOME tax on billionaires," Sirota said. "But billionaires make money off non-income sources."
Gabriel Zucman, a French economist who has championed the wealth tax measure in California, has said this critical distinction between wealth and income is the reason why a wealth tax in California is needed to begin with.
"California's billionaires now hold $2.3 trillion in wealth—equivalent to roughly half of California's [gross domestic product] and about 10% of US GDP," he said. "One might assume that such immense wealth translates into equally enormous tax payments. It doesn't."
Citing a NBER working paper from last month, Zucman pointed out that "California's [top four] billionaires pay only 0.07% of their wealth each year in California income tax" while billionaires as a whole represent "barely 0.2% of the state's total tax revenue," meaning that they "contribute a negligible amount to the state that made them rich."
He noted that Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page—who have publicly opposed the billionaire's tax and, in Brin's case, spent tens of millions of dollars trying to stop it—reported no taxable income in 2019, 2020, and 2023 because all of their wealth was held in company stock. Since they didn't sell any stock during those years, they had no capital gains and therefore owed no income tax.
In the meantime, Zucman noted, "their fortunes have increased by more than $400 billion" since 2019.
🚨NEW: @RoKhanna suggests @GavinNewsom is trying to block a billionaire tax in order to protect big donors.
"Why would you want to side with 250 billionaires over the working class? The only reason...is because you care about 250 people's contributions." pic.twitter.com/mg9kHPGSa2
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 23, 2026
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.)—another potential 2028 presidential candidate who introduced his own federal billionaire wealth tax legislation in March with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—has vocally questioned Newsom's opposition to the ballot measure in California.
"Why would you want to side with 250 billionaires over the working class in California?" he asked earlier this week on a podcast hosted by Sirota. "The only reason, in my view, to not be taxing them is because you care about these 250 people's contributions to the political system."
Sirota speculated that Newsom's motivation behind co-opting and watering down the "billionaire tax" concept was much the same.
He said, "This is Newsom thinking he can fool everyone and going to bat for billionaire donors who could fund his presidential campaign."
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Elon Musk Is the World's First Trillionaire—Let's Make Sure He's the Last
Musk’s trillion does not materialize from genius. It is extracted from systems that workers built, that governments subsidized, and that the public is now invited to applaud.
Jun 13, 2026
Elon Musk was set to become the world’s first trillionaire Friday after the public debut of his rocket and AI company, SpaceX.
Sit with that number for a moment. A trillion dollars. If you spent a million dollars every single day, it would take you 2,700 years to spend down a trillion. It is more than the entire GDP of Argentina or Nigeria. It is a figure so large that our brains are not really equipped to process it as a real thing.
According to Oxfam, 60% of billionaire wealth globally is not “earned” in any sense of the word that you or I would recognize, but derived from inheritance, monopoly power, or crony connections.
By UBS’s own count, the great wealth transfer is accelerating, with a record $297.8 billion passing to just 91 heirs in 2025. Musk’s own wealth did not surge through some new invention, but through a private-market revaluation of SpaceX and his AI company xAI, a paper merger that pushed his net worth from $500 billion to $800 billion in just four months.
The 1% have the money and, for now, control of the politics. The 99% have the majority, the moral case, and a growing refusal to be distracted from who is actually picking their pockets.
Tesla, the engine of much of his wealth, runs on public subsidy, tax incentives, and regulatory frameworks his own companies have spent years bending into shape. Musk’s trillion does not materialize from genius. It is extracted from systems that workers built, that governments subsidized, and that the public is now invited to applaud.
Earlier this year—while his companies held billions in government contracts—Musk played a role inside the US government running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE fired the regulators, hollowed out the agencies, and dismantled the oversight structures that might otherwise have asked awkward questions of his own companies.
A Yale model estimated Musk’s political activities cost Tesla between one million and 1.26 million US vehicle sales as furious Americans boycotted the electric car manufacturer. He took that hit and kept going, which tells you what the access was worth to him. This is regulatory capture as a business model, dressed up as a public service.
But this is not about one man and his excessive wealth. It is systemic, and the same pattern recurs across every region.
In South Africa, the Gupta brothers spent years so deeply embedded in former President Jacob Zuma’s government that a judicial commission concluded the state itself had been captured, with cabinet appointments and contracts steered to serve private interests.
In India, Gautam Adani built one of the world’s great fortunes in lockstep with his proximity to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, winning state contracts and infrastructure concessions as his net worth soared, while those who called it crony capitalism were brushed aside.
In Mexico, Carlos Slim became one of the richest men on Earth almost overnight when the Salinas government privatized the state telephone monopoly and sold it to him, handing a public asset to a private fortune that has dominated the country’s telecoms ever since.
Billionaires are 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary citizens, and where they do not hold office outright, they buy the people who do. When wealth concentrates at this velocity, democracy is revealed as a sham.
Meanwhile, the world that produced this wealth continues as it is. The World Inequality Report, drawing on the work of 200 researchers, found that the poorest half of humanity holds barely 2% of global wealth while fewer than 60,000 people at the very top control three times as much as that entire bottom half combined.
This context cannot be separated from the Musk wealth story. The systems that funnel money upward at unbelievable speed are the same systems that underfund public health, load poor countries with debt they cannot escape, and leave communities without the basics that governments once treated as obligations.
You will be told, as you always are, that taxing extreme wealth is complicated, that capital flees, that redistribution is a blunt and dangerous tool. These arguments are made by people who would be taxed more.
A wealth tax sufficient to fund universal healthcare and education across the Global South has been modeled, costed, and proposed repeatedly. The obstacle has never been the arithmetic. It has always been the politics, and the politics is owned by the people the tax would affect.
But here is what the first trillionaire does not want you to notice. Across the same world that produced Musk’s fortune, the 99% are organizing. Carnegie’s Global Protest Tracker recorded more than 110 major anti-government protests across 70 countries in the last year. Most of them were powered by the same anger at the same rigged system.
Young people forced a tax climbdown in Kenya, brought down governments in Nepal and Madagascar, and took to the streets from Morocco to Indonesia demanding the rules be rewritten. They did it without trillion-dollar war chests. They did it themselves, alongside people like you and me, in solidarity, with an insistence that wealth concentration is not inevitable.
That movement is the counterweight to everything this moment represents. Billionaires are feeling the pressure. In May, Jeff Bezos went on CNBC to insist the tax system is crony capitalism, defend his peers against "vilification," and deny that the ultra rich avoid tax at all, the sound of a class that suddenly feels the need to argue its case in public.
Every wealth tax now argued seriously in a parliament, every billionaire levy being debated at the United Nations, every debt cancellation demand making it onto a government agenda arrived there because people organized and refused to accept the terms being set for them from above. The 1% have the money and, for now, control of the politics. The 99% have the majority, the moral case, and a growing refusal to be distracted from who is actually picking their pockets.
The 12 of June, 2026 may be the day the first trillionaire was officially minted, but it can also be the moment millions more people decide they have had enough.
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To Crush Global Inequality and Secure Livable Future, Scholars Call for 90% Tax on Mega-Rich
"The current international order is plutocratic," said French economist Thomas Piketty. "It is essential to move away from this plutocratic system to a new democratic order."
Jun 04, 2026
A sprawling report released Thursday argues that averting the "bleak techno-authoritarian futures now being sold to us" and laying the groundwork for a just, livable future requires restructuring the world's economic order to widely redistribute wealth that has been hoarded at the very top for decades.
The report, compiled by hundreds of researchers from around the world and published by the World Inequality Lab (WIL), is billed as the first comprehensive attempt to lay out a plan to "reconcile planetary habitability and high well-being for all." Achieving that aim will be impossible, the authors argue, "without a drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth, and power."
"The current international order is plutocratic," said French economist Thomas Piketty, a renowned expert on inequality and co-director of WIL. "It is essential to move away from this plutocratic system to a new democratic order."
The report outlines a number of proposals that would redress staggering levels of wealth and income inequality. Currently, the top 10% of the global population brings in more income than the remaining 90% combined. Wealth inequality is even more extreme, with the top 10% controlling 75% of global wealth, compared to 2% controlled by the poorest half of humanity.
Specifically, the authors call for a new, progressive global income tax that would peak at 90% for those who earn 5,000 times the average adult disposable income. They also propose taxing the wealth of millionaires and billionaires at a rate up to 20%.
Revenue from the new taxes would flow into a Global Justice Fund, which would distribute dividends to countries to help boost spending on climate, education, and healthcare. The fund would also invest in a World Sovereign Fund, whose returns on "sustainable assets" would be used to finance country dividends.
"The result is not a transfer from many to few but a gain for almost everyone," Piketty and other report contributors wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian. "Close to 90% of the world’s population would double their income between 2026 and 2100, and once leisure and a habitable planet are counted, more than 99% come out ahead."
"Technical impossibility is not what is standing in the way, but rather the absence of a shared vision of social progress, at once concrete and radical."
Redressing inequality would not be sufficient to secure a livable future, the report authors emphasize, given that continued fossil fuel use and expansion are pushing the world in the direction of climate catastrophe. What's required to prevent planetary disaster is a "fundamental transformation of energy systems," the report argues.
"This means electrifying energy demand wherever feasible (such as transitioning vehicle fleets) and switching to low-carbon fuels (for example, in steel and cement production)," the report states. "Crucially, electricity generation itself must be decarbonized, moving away from fossil fuels toward renewables like hydropower, solar, and wind."
The report also envisions a move away from overconsumption toward what the authors call a future of "sufficiency," which would entail shorter work hours for the global labor force, changes to land use, and other reforms.
Such ambitious goals will not become reality, the report stresses, without "a powerful citizen movement and a dense network of broad-based organizations (including labor unions, political parties, civic platforms, and other collective initiatives) which are sufficiently well-organized and effective at promoting broad institutional and policy change."
"A habitable, equal, and prosperous 21st Century is materially possible," the authors declare. "Technical impossibility is not what is standing in the way, but rather the absence of a shared vision of social progress, at once concrete and radical. What it will take instead is political choice, and the hard work of coalition-building behind it."
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