Tech’s biggest names sunk a tax on billionaires’ wealth with $425m and a familiar playbook

Résumé détaillé

California saw the most expensive opposition campaign in its history as funding of political campaigns broke records in the US midterms ...

California saw the most expensive opposition campaign in its history as funding of political campaigns broke records in the US midterms

In the hours after polls closed on election day, tech industry players began praising Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, on social media.

“Huge thanks to Sergey Brin here,” wrote Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator. Venture capitalist Ilya Sukhar posted: “God bless Sergey Brin.” And David Marcus, a crypto entrepreneur, simply wrote: “Hero.”

They were all referring to Brin’s instrumental role in the defeat of California’s wealth tax ballot measure, known as Proposition 40. The proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaires in the state is poised to be defeated by double-digit numbers. Simultaneously, an opposition initiative that would ban any taxation on billionaire wealth, Proposition 42, put on the ballot by Brin and a cohort of the state’s ultra-rich, passed.

Brin, whose net worth is about $230bn, contributed at least $132m to the fight – more than any other donor. The runner-up was former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who gave more than $48m. Millions more were donated by executives from Palantir, DoorDash, Stripe and Reddit, along with prominent venture capitalists. All told, Silicon Valley’s elite raised nearly $425m to sink the tax, according to campaign finance filings, making it the most expensive opposition campaign in state history.

Over the last month, the campaign poured those dollars into highly produced ads and mailers that bombarded voters with warnings that the tax was dangerous and would hurt everyday people. Taglines from the campaign said Prop 40 was an “everyone tax”, “reckless experiment” and “you’re next”. While supporters of the tax said the money would go toward funding the state’s healthcare losses from Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, opponents repeatedly sent the message to voters that it would make healthcare funding worse.

Even without Prop 40’s outsized opponents, the pro-billionaire tax campaign had a…

The…

Début de l'article, extrait de The Guardian Business. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.