Found here. Our comments in bold.
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Dr. Reich spouts the Leftist line with facility. It rolls off his word processor like so much effluent. He perfectly parrots The Agenda (the decades-long effort to overthrow The System), while pretending to embrace "equality," "democracy," and "fairness." In actual fact, the Left is actually intent on causing more and more problems, with the idea that finally people will be ready for a different system.
That's the goal of people like Dr. Reich. And that's the purpose of his article today. So nothing you will read here is intended for telling the truth. It's for manipulation and distraction. It's to get you riled up at the horrible injustice of people having a lot of money while other people suffer and die.
That's what Dr. Reich wants you to think. Don't fall for it.
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Friends,
We don’t have to rely on the federal government — which remains shuttered, whose Republican-controlled Congress remains dysfunctional, whose Supreme Court emits elusive mutterings from its shadow docket, and whose president is nuts — to advance a progressive agenda. (What??? On what basis should anyone expect their political agenda be advanced by government? Government's job is to govern, not to advance agendas.)
Several states are taking up the baton.
Case in point: I recently joined with one of California’s most powerful unions (SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers West, whose members work in hospitals and clinics across the state) and one of the nation’s most respected economists (Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez) to unveil a 2026 California state ballot measure that would establish the nation’s first wealth tax. (The nation already has a wealth tax. Actually, more than one: Income tax, property tax, capital gains tax, and the estate tax, just to name a few.)
It’s an emergency tax (There is no such thing.)
on billionaires, to make up for the $100 million hit to California’s Medicaid program that Trump and his Republican Congress made in their One Big Beautiful (big ugly) bill. That bill, you’ll recall, cut taxes mainly for the wealthy (False.)
and paid for it by reducing federal appropriations for Medicaid. (True, but it also installed work requirements. That means fewer people will need Medicaid.)
If the measure qualifies for the November 2026 ballot and were to be enacted by California voters, it would levy a 5 percent tax on the wealth (That is, wealth that has already been taxed and now will be taxed again.
Let's do some math. 200 billionaires means at least 200 billion dollars will be taxed at 5%. 5% of 200 billion is 10 billion. Remember Dr. Reich said that the state has been hit with a $100 million Medicaid cut. But the tax will generate $10 billion. Hmm.)
of the state’s roughly 200 billionaires. (Did billionaires cause the Medicaid cuts? Are they somehow responsible for California's inability to govern itself?
And by the way, since an "emergency tax" will no doubt continue on into perpetuity, how many billionaires will still live in California after, say, 5 years?)
It would direct 90 percent of those funds to California’s Medicaid recipients and the institutions that serve them (with the remaining 10 percent going to the state’s K-12 schools).
Its purpose is to address what would otherwise be a crisis for many Medicaid recipients and the hospitals and clinics that treat them. (No, its purpose is The Agenda, for Leftist to help themselves to money that doesn't belong to them in order to create "income equality," that is, Socialism.)
Yet the measure could have much broader implications for America, at a time when the fortunes of the ultra wealthy have reached the stratosphere while median incomes are stagnant and public funding is shrinking. (Dr. Reich's worth is estimated to be about $4 million. As a multi millionaire he can rest easy that the tax will pass him by. He can continue to preach about the eevil rich while being rich himself because hypocrisy is not a thing for the Left.)
Indeed, proposals to raise taxes on the ultra wealthy to finance what average working people need (How in the world does Dr. Reich know what working people "need?" And why should government involve itself in determining this?)
are emerging in several places — most notably in New York City, where Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani (who may be elected the city’s next mayor tomorrow) aims to raise the income taxes of residents with annual incomes in excess of $1 million by 2 percent in order to fund universal child care. (The Leftist solution to every problem: Raise taxes.)
Such proposals have raised predictable outrage from the rich, along with threats that they’ll move elsewhere where taxes are lower and dire predictions that their fellow plutocrats will refuse to move in.
Yet there’s scant evidence for these consequences. (This is false. Let's consider California:
- 196 companies have left California from 2020 – August 2025
- 54% of the companies that left California relocated to Texas
- The second most popular state for relocation is Florida (with just 7% of the companies)
- Companies have moved to 30 different US states (+ one country, Luxembourg)
- 17 companies with more than 10,000 employees have left
- 2021 had the most exits with 60 companies (31% of the total list)
Imagine what a wealth tax will do.)
In fact, when Massachusetts passed a “millionaires tax” in 2023, conservatives claimed the rich would flee. But two years later, they haven’t — and Massachusetts has collected $5.7 billion for infrastructure and public education. (Correlation isn't causation. And clearly people are leaving Massachusetts in droves.)
Note also that the California proposal is a one-time-only tax and would be levied exclusively on billionaires’ current net worth in 2025. (Promises, promises.)
So even if they decide to move to the Virgin Islands, they’ll still be liable for 5 percent of their wealth in 2025. (They can stretch out their payments over the next five years, but their payments will still be based just on their net worth in 2025.)
By the same token, the tax won’t crimp the fortunes of any billionaire who moves into California next year or any later year, as it applies only to the billionaires living in the state this year.
The incomes of America’s billionaires have been rising by an average of 7.5 percent a year since the start of the pandemic — in sharp contrast with the measly 1.5 percent average increase for median-income Americans. So even after the 5 percent tax is levied, the ultra wealthy will still be getting wealthier at a rapid clip. ("Tax them because they can afford it" is not a tax strategy.)
The sums they’ll owe are readily calculable, since about 72 percent of billionaires’ wealth is in their ownership of publicly traded stock. ("It's so easy to pay." Just cash in some stock to pay the tax, and pay tax on the capital gains of the stock sale. What a deal...
Leftists like Dr. Reich think the rich are just sitting around with piles of money doing nothing. But most wealthy peoples' wealth is in the value of businesses they own, or real estate, or other tangible assets. They are extremely wealthy on paper, but generally speaking it's not liquid wealth.
The point is, this money doesn't appear out of nowhere. The rich selling off assets to pay a tax will create ripple effects all through the California economy.)
As they do with their payment of income taxes, billionaires would file their wealth taxes themselves in 2027 (assuming the measure had been enacted the previous November) based on their net worth in 2025. The state can audit those returns if its estimates of their fortunes are significantly at variance with those filings.
The politics of this couldn’t be better (Now the merits of taxation is based on politics. This is fast becoming a nightmare.)
— given that 15 million Californians on Medi-Cal (the state’s version of Medicaid) (Waaait.
Medicaid serves as a critical health safety net. It is a partnership between the federal government and state governments designed to provide health coverage for specific categories of low-income Americans.
The population of California is just short of 40 million. 15 million [38%] are low income? What kind of state is California that so many people are in such a bad situation?)
are on the brink of losing much if not all of their health insurance because of cutbacks imposed by Trump and congressional Republicans — who, again, redirected those funds to massive tax cuts for the rich. (Repeats false statement.)
And remember, this tax affects just 200 billionaires. (Yeah, just 200. Democracy is a bitch if you're the minority.)
(Californians have until June to collect the required number of valid signatures — roughly 874,000 — to place it on the November 2026 ballot.)
This isn’t the final answer to America’s disgraceful inequalities of wealth and income, of course, but it’s a start. (It's not a "start." We've been engaging in wealth redistribution via the coercive power of government for many decades. Yet these "disgraceful inequalities" still exist, and are in fact worse than ever. But rather than consider where things may have gone wrong, the Left doubles down with even more taxes.
The reason? Well, the Left doesn't actually care about inequality. It cares about The Agenda, the never ending effort to foment discontent among the proletariat against the bourgeois. The Agenda is the overthrow of the system.
The Left doesn't care about inequality, racism. gay rights, the poor, or feminism. These issues are important only to the degree they serve to advance The Agenda.
The reader would do well to keep this in mind.)
It may open the way to further efforts to rein in the obscenely rich. (Imagine. Dr. Reich thinks that government ought to have the power to "rein in" people simply because they are successful.)
Hopefully, Mamdani’s election tomorrow will open up another.
These efforts are essential not only to funding what most people need but also to preserving our democracy. (Remember, "just 200 billionaires.")
They also offer powerful reminders that even with Trump lording over America (The Left wants its power back and hates it when the other side uses the power of government in a way they don't like. Ironic indeed.)
like a giant slug, positive change can and will still happen at the state (and city) level.
I’ll continue to highlight the most promising and important state proposals.
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