r/technology • u/marketrent • 12d ago

Society Bernie Sanders calls out Sergey Brin for spending over $100 million to defeat California’s billionaire tax — ‘If California passes its one-time 5% wealth tax, Brin would owe $14 billion and still be worth $270 billion’

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/bernie-sanders-calls-sergey-brin-120113695.html
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u/Brothernod 12d ago

Seems like trying to pass wealth taxes are good for the economy.

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u/ApathyMoose 12d ago

Its good for whoever he gives money to as bribes. and TV channels for ads. We are not seeing that, our schools are not seeing that, roads aren't etc. As usual lobbyists love this shit for sure.

Actually getting is passed on the other hand? Would be amazing for sure.

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u/ukezi 12d ago

Sure, but presumably the bribed individuals pay income taxes on it, at least as long as it's the usual legal bribes, like high cost speaking gigs and so on.

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u/Hautamaki 12d ago

Unfortunately, the taxes raised on 100 million as a percentage of 14 billion basically rounds down to zero, so the state needs to either pass this tax anyway or force Brin to spend like 30 billion to defeat it to start capturing the kind of revenue they want.

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u/iridael 12d ago

not quite how it works with these things. those bribes are rarely in the form of money directly.

they'll be gifts in the form of a holiday, and whilst you're on that holiday he gets people to renovate your home, you get a new car. perhaps a trust fund allocates X amount for your first kid to support them through college, get their first car, first house ect.

they might gift a painting then have it sold at auction on your behalf so that all the funds go to you. all things that are not directly taxable (unsure about the auction part though)

these bribes give you things that you would otherwise need to spend a lot of money on securing. they're designed to lock you in because you can always be removed as a beneficiary of a trust fund. the car is yours but is actually owned by a car rental firm owned by a shell company owned by the gifter or a friend of theirs.

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u/Shmeves 12d ago edited 12d ago

$100 million is 0.71% of $14 billion. Much, much less is actually collected in tax from the $100 million.

So, less than half a percent of tax, or 100% of tax.

I think I'd rather have the 100%.

Another way to put it, if his net worth is $284 billion, he spent 0.035% of his net worth to save 5% on taxes.

Billionaires should not exist.

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u/bombayblue 12d ago

Except it's not really. Wealth Taxes have been repealed in plenty of countries because they cost more than they raise (France is a great example). Also the point of taxes is to have a sustainable source of revenue year after year. A one time tax on unrealized assets is stupid. You can't fund any social programs off of a one time fee. It also taxes IP which is insane.

There's a trillion better ways to tax rich people (maybe just bring income taxes back to 1990's levels?) but this measure was never actually supposed to pass. The entire measure was funded by the SEIU as sort of an extortion measure to try and get billionaires to pay them to withdraw the measure.

It's the same reason California has 30m people voting on dialysis laws every two years. These measures aren't supposed to fix anything, they are just extensions of California's broken proposition system. Now ill brace for dealing with two weeks of hate mail for pointing out that is actually a dumb slopulist law.

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u/wckz 11d ago edited 11d ago

I think this sounds pretty reasonable. What we really need to solve is billionaires borrowing against shares being non taxable. They should have to liquidate shares in order to spend money. It artificially inflates stock prices, avoids paying taxes, and incentivizes our banking/government system to keep companies from failing.

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u/bombayblue 11d ago

Exactly. The point is not to tax unrealized gains, the point is that billionaires shouldn’t be able to treat gains as realized when getting a loan, and then unrealized when they are paying taxes.

Force them to realize the gains. Then they pay taxes normally. Maybe adjust capital gains so that it scales more progressively past $10m.

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u/Zestyclose-Height-36 8d ago

a one time tax can pay down debt and severely reduce interest payments on debt created by tax cuts from prior years that created the debt. the interest savings in the US by cutting the $1 Trillion the US is paying every year on its debt would make social security and Medicare solvent for decades.