California’s stock market billionaires are angrily denouncing a proposed tax to fund healthcare for the millions of illegal migrants they welcomed into their state.
The tech sector “is getting what they had coming ….[after] pushing for open borders and unbridled employment visas,” said Kevom Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, which opposes the H-1B program. He continued:
A strong, middling class that can form families, pay for college educations without going into debt, and pay for health care, doesn’t need this kind of a [tax] grift … but now it’s on the tech bros to pay for the health care for all these illegal immigrants — and all the healthcare workers who have to service them.
“You funded Democrats and the people who censored, locked down, and tormented us. That was your political gamble,” said a message from conservative activist Mike Cernovich. In a later tweet, he added:
90% of Tech and VC [executives] are cultural Marxists with a hatred of Americans. That’s why they want infinite [subordinate] H-1B’s. They hate [citizens].
But, he added, “There’s a split happening … We can take back the country with 10% of them.”
Billionaire Rethink
The political drama is forcing many billionaires to recognize that their pro-migration policies are importing resentment and poverty, so shifting national politics against their pocketbooks.
The proposed tax is likely to appear on California’s ballot in November. Once passed, the measure would require roughly 200 billionaires to pay a share of the controlling value they own in companies, including companies they founded.
Proponents say the ballot would raise $100 billion, mostly for healthcare programs. On January 10, the Wall Street Journal quoted an official at the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, saying, “We’re simply trying to keep emergency rooms open and save patient lives…the few [billionaires] who left have shown the world just how outrageously greedy they truly are.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a supposed moderate Democrat, has supported the proposed tax. He needs the support of Democratic-aligned unions for his expected presidential campaign.
Many billionaires are blasting the tax as a crude wealth-grab — and some are leaving the state.
“I love California … but stupid wealth tax proposals like this make it irresponsible for me not to plan leaving the state,” said DoorDash founder Andy Fang, who gained billions by creating an industry of poorly-paid migrant delivery workers.
The original founders of Google Inc., for example, have reportedly moved themselves to low-tax Florida.
“That math doesn’t math,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, a Silicon Valley investor with ethnic roots in Sri Lanka, which is a small island off of southern India. “Everyone that is potentially touched by this will now leave, and all that will result is a massive hole in California’s finances that you will be forced to fill.”
The Billionaires’ Bill for Migration
Some of the outraged billionaires recognize that mass migration created the political base for the wealth grab.
“After blindly funding the Left for years, Silicon Valley is finally realizing what time it is. Dinner time,” said David Sacks, a California investor and author who is now advising Trump’s administration and moving his legal address to Texas. Silicon Valley is “on the menu,” he added.
“The blast radius, however, of healthcare for illegal aliens, will be the end of Silicon Valley” in California, said Palihapitiya.
“I care about two issues: I care about immigration and re-establishing the deterrent capacity of America,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp told the New York Times in December. “We are on the side of working-class Americans.”
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“This has always been inevitable and is not due to Newsom or any individual,” said Elon Musk, who is increasingly critical of mass migration. “The Democratic Party is utterly controlled by the unions and the trial lawyers and California is a one-party state.”
Those concerns were echoed by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on January 12:
Open immigration would be something interesting if we gave people nothing [in welfare]. Because if we gave them nothing, if they weren’t smart enough, capable, entrepreneurial enough, driven enough, they would starve to death, and so they wouldn’t stay here, they would self deport. But if you give them welfare, and you’re going to give them food stamps, and you’re gonna give them housing and you give them this, everybody’s gonna come and just leech off of us, and we’re going to pay and pay and pay.
Separately, a growing number of American CEOs — including some left-wingers — are increasingly alarmed at Muslim migration into the United States.
They include Larry Fink, founder of the giant BlackRock investment firm, Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and Meta, and investor David Sacks. Similarly, many writers and advocates have stepped back from full-throated advocacy for migration amid the growing clout of Islamic activists, who now include the new Mayor of New York City.
Buying a Fix
The billionaires are spending some of their cash to win a political fix.
“It’s time for Silicon Valley to actually get involved and organized in California,” said Gerry Tan, an investor in many tech companies. “I will fight,” said Fang, the DoorDash founder who has funded many prior political battles.
On January 13, they won support from California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is planning his own run for President in 2028. “This will be defeated — there’s no question in my mind … I’ll do what I have to do to protect the state,” he told the New York Times, which added:
While Mr. Newsom helped stop past wealth tax bills in the State Capitol, the new proposal is being driven by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West through the initiative process and beyond the reach of his veto pen.
…
“I want to be adamant and very clear: This is a ballot measure we are putting on the ballot,” [Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff for the labor union] said. “We’re going to have voters vote on it in November.”
But the billionaires have yet to offer any concessions to the many millions of American voters who have lost wages and wealth amid the billionaires’ stock-market boom and far-left political advocacy.
Those wealth-sharing concessions could include elite support for ending the Extraction Migration economy that damages ordinary Americans. The billionaires might even offer curbs on the H-1B visa program that is deliberately used to push millions of American college graduates out of productive and innovative careers.
“They should take the same lesson that an element of the business community took in the 1920s,” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. He added:
They saw the political changes related to [1920s] anarchism … and immigration, and they concluded that it might be worth paying a nickel an hour more [in wages] to have American workers instead of these kinds of political consequences. Obviously, the nickel an hour doesn’t apply anymore here, but it’s the same concept: cheap [migrant] labor not only creates a lot of welfare costs and political costs.
In 1924, Congress passed an immigration reform that set the stage for the United States’ dominance in the 20th Century.
Migration Grows Poverty
The billionaires may be able to buy a short-term victory. But they are struggling against a self-created political tide in many states where voters have been pushed on their backs by flat wages and rising home costs caused by migration.
In those states, many progressives are eager to drain vast wealth and political power from the billionaire class for their left-wing priorities. States should “follow examples like what is being proposed in Rhode Island, Michigan, and other states,” said a January 12 press statement from a union-led group titled May Day Strong.
“A millionaire tax [in Massachusetts] has generated at least $5.7 billion in revenue since 2023 to pay for schools, public transit, and infrastructure,” the “Tax the Rich Policy” statement said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) is slamming the pro-migration technology donors in California, including FWD.us leader Reid Hoffman, as well as Dustin Moskovitz, Marc Andreessen, and Patrick Collison:
Hoffman wants Democratic candidates to stand with the billionaires for higher [water and electricity] costs. Running on small, vague ideas that may also raise costs for families—instead of on full-throated, economic populist ideas—is a terrible plan for winning elections.
In November, predicted Lynn, “anyone who isn’t a billionaire is going to eventually back this [ballot measure], because that’s how democracy works.”
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