I THOUGHT IT WAS BASED ON GREED AND ENVY: California’s Proposed ‘Billionaire Tax’ Is Based on Bad Research.
A survey conducted September 4–10 by the Public Policy Institute of California found 52 percent support for Proposition 40, which would impose a (supposedly) one-time 5 percent tax on the wealth of people with assets worth over $1 billion. Interestingly, 51 percent of respondents also support Proposition 41, which requires audits for new taxes and bars the way the wealth tax measure would allocate collected revenue, and 54 percent favor Proposition 42, which prohibits taxes on financial assets. Under California law, “if provisions of two or more measures approved at the same election conflict, those of the measure receiving the highest affirmative vote prevail.”
Those conflicting measures could save Californians from themselves, since the proposed wealth tax is based on bad assumptions and would do enormous damage to the state’s economy. Unfortunately, much self-inflicted harm is already locked in. In March, a Hoover Institution study found that wealthy individuals leaving the state in fear of Proposition 40’s passage had already removed “$536 billion, or nearly 30 percent of aggregate billionaire wealth, from the tax base.”
And the flawed research? It came from a couple of French-born Berkeley professors who seem to specialize in justification for taxing the bejeezus out of stuff.