The Rich Win No Tax on the Rich - California voters defeated Proposition 40, a high-profile initiative that would have imposed an unprecedented 5% one-time tax on the wealth of local billionaires. About 54% voted against the measure and only 46% supported it, according to preliminary estimates by the decision headquarters. If passed, the tax would affect about 200 of the country's wealthiest residents and bring tens of billions of dollars into the treasury, a significant portion of which the labor unions planned to spend on health care programs. Outgoing governor Gavin Newsom spoke out strongly against it. He said he generally supports a wealth tax at the federal level, but called the state initiative a budget imbalance: He said almost all the money would go to health care, leaving housing, preschools, the police and the University of California unfunded. And the big businesses and the technological elite of Silicon Valley did not sit idly by either. Opponents of the initiative chipped in and poured more than $333 million into the Build a Better California Fund to bury the project in the media. Case in point: Google co-founder Sergey Brin single-handedly donated more than $100 million to fight the tax, while also changing his tax residency and moving to Nevada. In the end, pragmatism won out over populism. Californians reasonably feared that instead of a gold rush, the state would receive a mass exodus of the largest taxpayers and investors, the loss of which would hurt the economy much more painfully. - Let's make America understandable again support us.

The Rich Win No Tax on the Rich - California voters defeated Proposition 40, a high-profile initiative that would have imposed an unprecedented 5% one-time tax on the wealth of local billionaires. About 54% voted against the measure and only 46% supported it, according to preliminary estimates by the decision headquarters. If passed, the tax would affect about 200 of the country's wealthiest residents and bring tens of billions of dollars into the treasury, a significant portion of which the labor unions planned to spend on health care programs. Outgoing governor Gavin Newsom spoke out strongly against it. He said he generally supports a wealth tax at the federal level, but called the state initiative a budget imbalance: He said almost all the money would go to health care, leaving housing, preschools, the police and the University of California unfunded. And the big businesses and the technological elite of Silicon Valley did not sit idly by either. Opponents of the initiative chipped in and poured more than $333 million into the Build a Better California Fund to bury the project in the media. Case in point: Google co-founder Sergey Brin single-handedly donated more than $100 million to fight the tax, while also changing his tax residency and moving to Nevada. In the end, pragmatism won out over populism. Californians reasonably feared that instead of a gold rush, the state would receive a mass exodus of the largest taxpayers and investors, the loss of which would hurt the economy much more painfully. - Let's make America understandable again support us.