WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tomorrow, an anonymous group is slated to hold a “March for Billionaires” in San Francisco in an effort to rally enough good will for billionaires to defeat a proposed ballot initiative to impose a one-time 5% wealth tax on the California billionaires to prevent the state’s healthcare system from collapsing. While some billionaires, like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, accept the idea of paying more in taxes, others, like Peter Thiel, have threatened to leave the state and plan to spend millions of dollars fighting the tax initiative. Also worth noting: The overwhelming majority of Americans support higher taxes on billionaires.
Ahead of the march, Igor Volsky, campaign director for Tax the Greedy Billionaires, issued the following statement:
“The idea of a pro-billionaire march at a time when millions of working people are struggling is so out of touch that it’s almost laughable. But there is nothing funny about the ways in which extreme wealth has corroded every facet of American life. An increasingly small group of ultra-wealthy individuals have the power to manipulate markets and drive up the cost of goods to maximize their own profits, bankroll politicians who will protect their own interests, and even buy media outlets they view as threatening.”
“March for Billionaires” organizers want to focus on the positive, pointing out the ultra-wealthy individuals who made their fortunes building companies that employ thousands and solve real problems. In some cases, that’s true. Others simply inherited their vast wealth, while others have profited through high-stakes financial gambles backed by taxpayer money and outright fraud. Regardless of how they came into money, the historic level of concentrated extreme wealth gives a very small group of people the power to control our democracy, distort our markets, and extract wealth from the rest of us. A few key examples:
- Jeff Bezos: Built a store that crushed independent retailers, violated basic worker protections to squeeze every penny from its workforce, copied small sellers’ products, and now has monopolistic power over the marketplace where entrepreneurs must sell—going so far as to force sellers to raise their prices on other platforms. Bought the Washington Post, reshaped editorial standards to favor his own business and financial interests, and oversaw sweeping layoffs.
- Larry Page & Sergey Brin: Made the world’s information accessible to everyone, for free, by harvesting our private data and building a monopolistic ad machine found by U.S. courts to have violated antitrust law in search and in open-web advertising, extracting 36 cents from every advertising dollar while crushing competitors.
- Brian Chesky: Created Airbnb, converting scarce single-family homes into short- term rentals and driving up rents by 3-30% in major cities.
The California billionaire tax ballot initiative is an effort to meaningfully chip away at this corrosive wealth, resetting the balance of power, while safeguarding the state’s healthcare system.
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