MacKenzie: Save healthcare services by taxing billionaires

Workers in America have been under attack for decades, with billionaires transferring ever larger portions of the nation’s wealth from our pockets into theirs.

After H.R.1 or the “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed healthcare funding last year to give tax cuts to the wealthy, voters in Santa Clara County stepped up with Measure A to save our local hospitals. The working class in California can begin to rebalance the scales in November by voting yes on Proposition 40, the billionaire tax.

Healthcare in California is in dire straits. We’ve seen insurance premiums increase and had to cut funding to essential social services. Worse, we are under attack from a hostile federal government illegally withholding funding to push our crisis past the breaking point. Everything is going according to plan for Trump and his allies in the billionaire class. All they want is for us to vote down Prop. 40 so they can keep the money they are stealing from our healthcare system.

Some worry a billionaire tax will cause the ultra-wealthy to flee. Such fears are unfounded. Despite constant threats to leave any place that will tax them, the wealthy never follow through. The Massachusetts millionaire tax on high earners has drawn in more than twice the money anticipated three years in a row. It has been known for years that wealth flight is a lie despite protestations otherwise. People like to stay where they live. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani showed how threats to leave can generate more tax revenue with his Pied-à-Terre tax on second homes.

Even if the ultra-wealthy defy past precedent and flee, the Prop. 40 analysis on our ballots tells us that we still come out on top. They’d be too late since the tax considers California residency on Jan. 1. The tax is predicted to generate tens of billions of dollars and has “potential” for hundreds of millions of lost revenue yearly afterward. That means it will take a century to end up in the red, giving us plenty of time to close all the loopholes billionaires exploit to pay a lower tax rate than most workers.

When I’ve canvassed my neighbors for Prop. 40, one reason I have heard people oppose the measure is that they don’t like that it is only a temporary tax on billionaires. But we can vote to make the tax permanent, just like voters can permanently extend a tax on high earners this year with Proposition 3. We can’t make a temporary tax on the ultra-wealthy permanent if we don’t pass it in the first place.

Our political democracy has been under siege since even before Citizens United. Elon Musk spent nearly $300 million on the 2024 election to become the world’s first trillionaire. In return, he and DOGE dismantled our government, leaving our cattle infected with screwworm and our lettuce contaminated with diarrhea-causing microbes.

The situation in California is no different than the national case. The few billionaires being asked to pay a portion of their fair share funded the competing Propositions 41 and 42 to try to sneak in poison pills to invalidate the billionaire tax. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who started his political career with billionaire support, is trying to have his cake and eat it too by opposing the state tax which could pass and supporting a nonexistent federal tax.

Our political democracy has degraded because we lack economic democracy. Workers create the value and productivity of society, but we are alienated from the fruits of our labor. Voting for Prop. 40 is how we can begin to take back what is ours.

Tim MacKenzie is a Mountain View resident and steering committee member of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.