SAN FRANCISCO — As California struggles with homelessness and healthcare cuts, some activists are taking on an unexpected cause: fighting for billionaires.
About a dozen people took part in the “March for Billionaires” on Saturday morning in San Francisco to raise awareness about the plight of the ultrarich. Although some assumed the event was satire, organizer Derik Kauffman said it was a sincere protest against a potential new tax on the state’s wealthiest residents.
“We must not judge billionaires as a class but by their individual merits,” he said, speaking outside the San Francisco Civic Center. “There are good billionaires and bad billionaires, just like there are good people and bad people. California is extraordinarily lucky that this is where people come to start companies and build fortunes and we should do our best to keep it that way.”
The Billionaire Tax Act is a proposed state ballot initiative that would levy a one-time, 5% tax on the state’s billionaires to help offset recent federal cuts that have affected healthcare and food-assistance programs. The tax would apply to their overall net worth but would exclude pensions, real estate and retirement accounts.
Supporters say it would benefit the majority of the state’s residents and help ensure billionaires pay their fair share. Opponents — including Gov. Gavin Newsom — argue it will cause billionaires and the businesses they own to flee the state, taking jobs and tax dollars with them.
Kauffman echoed those concerns Saturday and said everyone should want billionaires to remain in California.
“This tax will drive billionaires out; it already has,” he said. “The founders of Google — they left the state and they are taking their money with them.”
Google is still headquartered in California, but other companies tied to Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin recently lef the state, including T-Rex Holdings, which moved from Palo Alto to Reno last year.
The event attracted a few dozen humorous counterprotesters.
Razelle Swimmer carried around a puppet of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, brandishing knives and wearing an apron that said “Eat the Rich.” Swimmer told The Times she doesn’t believe billionaires need more protections.
“If they aren’t willing to pay more taxes, then I don’t really care if they leave,” she said.
Other counterprotesters mockingly impersonated billionaires by donning crowns or top hats. A man and woman, playing characters called Oli Garch and Trilly O’Naire, said they worried what would happen if the tax passed.
“There is a small chance that my helicopter won’t be able to have a sauna in it just because apparently some kids want dental work or something,” said the woman, as she adjusted her tiara.
At one point, a man wearing a gold crown and carrying a sign that said “Let them eat cake” ran through the crowd shouting, “Keep the poors away from me.”
The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the main backer of the tax proposal, needs to collect about 875,000 signatures by June 24 in order to get the measure on the November ballot.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which offers guidance to the Legislature about budgetary issues, has cautioned that the tax might lead to only short-term benefits.
“It is likely that some billionaires decide to leave California,” the agency stated in a recent analysis. “The income taxes they currently pay to the state would go away with their departure. The reduction in state revenues from these kinds of responses could be hundreds of millions of dollars or more per year.”
California has roughly 200 billionaires, the most of any state. Their collective wealth was $2.2 trillion in October, up from $300 billion in 2011, according to a December report from law and economics professors at UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the University of Missouri.
The researchers concluded that billionaires in the United States pay less in taxes, relative to income, than the average American.
“It is estimated that, including all taxes at all levels of government, billionaires paid only 24% of their true economic income in taxes in years 2018-20 while the U.S.-wide average was 30%,” the report states.
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