As California voters head to the polls this November, their vote on whether to enact a first-of-its-kind billionaire wealth tax may mark "a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy," says a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists. The fight over Proposition 40—a ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the…
Page F2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 25 September 2026
Billionaire-backed group puts two more billionaire taxes on the California ballot, splitting the Yes three ways
As it ran on the front
You will want to know what the other two tax measures are for. They are not for anything. They are in the alternative.
An initiative does not have to win. It has to stand beside the one that might and carry off a portion of the Yes — a portion, mind you, not a majority — because a voter handed three ways to tax a billionaire has three ways to spend one vote.…
…(cont) Proposition 40 is a one-time five percent tax on the net worth of anyone holding a billion dollars or more. Two hundred of them, in California. The money funds the state's healthcare system.
On the sixteenth, fifty-two percent of likely voters backed it. On the twenty-second the Berkeley–POLITICO poll put the question to registered voters, a larger and looser crowd, and got forty-five. Forty-five.
On the eighteenth, a sixty-seven-page civil complaint against the union behind Proposition 40 arrived in federal court.
A group of Nobel Prize-winning economists called this vote "a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy." The reply came ... as paperwork. Two measures, qualified for the same ballot.
Two hundred fortunes, assessed once at five percent, against two more lines on a ballot. The healthcare money is the stake. Three measures, one vote.
By the well the man hangs two spare buckets. The man keeps the rope.
“Nobody spends that kind of money to put a tax on themselves — they spend it so you've got three boxes to check and the one that matters loses by a nose. That's not democracy in action, that's a guy buying the menu. And the five percent off two hundred fortunes was supposed to pay for the healthcare system, so when the Yes gets sliced up, it's not billionaires who go without a doctor.”
“More options on a ballot is more democracy, and frankly voters deserve alternatives — did I say alternatives? That doesn't sound like me, I said choices. Look, support fell to forty-five percent in the Berkeley poll, so the public's turning on this thing all by itself, and the union pushing it is answering a sixty-seven-page complaint in federal court, which I'm not commenting on, I'm just noting it exists.”
The receipts
A billionaire-backed group aims to undermine California’s wealth tax and create multiple ways to defeat it.
Dave Regan and SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the California union behind a proposed billionaire tax, facing allegations of mob-like "shakedown" tactics.
California's state ballot measure proposing a 5 percent tax on the state's 200 billionaires' net worth is losing support, according to a new poll released Monday. The University of California, Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll found that 45 percent of registered California voters support the ballot measure…
· California billionaire tax draws majority support in new poll — but there’s a big catch from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.