Progressives are using migrants’ voting power — and threats of a populist revolution — to grab a huge share of Silicon Valley’s stock-market wealth via a tax plan on California’s November ballot.
“You made all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of shit,” Kara Swisher, a progressive journalist in California, told one of the billionaires targeted by the ballot initiative. “We deserve the taxes from you,” added Swisher, who is wealthy, far-left, childless, and pro-migration.
If the billionaires resist pressure from California’s migrant-swelled voter rolls, any potential compromise should be replaced by “shock and awe” in the November ballot, she told Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who is readying a 2028 presidential campaign.
“What will make us fall behind China, is if we see further political dysfunction and social unrest,’ Khanna said as he argued that poor people — including many migrants welcomed by the billionaires — will launch a revolution against the investor class unless progressives get their cash:
The industrial revolution saw soaring inequality in Britain for nearly 60 years. On the continent, it lead to revolutions in France with worker uprisings (1848) and contributed to one in Russia (1917). America’s central challenge is to make sure the AI revolution works for all of us, not just tech billionaires. So yes, a billionaire tax is good for American innovation which depends on a strong and thriving American democracy.
The ballot is being pushed by a union of healthcare workers who want more state funding for illegal migrants. After decades of massive migration into California, the union has the membership and money to pass the ballot initiative.
California’s progressive politicians encourage illegal migration, and already allow illegal migrants to get taxpayer-funded healthcare. The growing number of naturalized migrants in the state is now giving resentful progressives the chance to take power from the high-status investors.
Khanna is an ethnic-Indian American who strongly supports more migration of H-1B Indians into Americans’ white-collar jobs. That pro-India policy has already thrown millions of American professionals out of good jobs and middle-class prosperity because U.S.-based managers quietly sell their jobs to inexperienced, mixed-skill Indian migrants.
Khanna’s 2028 Campaign
Khanna, the presidential candidate, is pitching the wealth tax as the price billionaires must pay to block Trump’s pro-American populists:
If we don’t want the [populist] revolt of people across this country, if we if we don’t want a [American-first] revolution that takes down tech and is anti-immigrant and calls for the disengagement with the world, then we have to recognize a country cannot survive half prosperous and half in decline. You can’t have islands of prosperity — and 70 percent of Americans believe in the American Dream is dead, [so] there has to be a public excellence, a public spiritedness that says, “We want in every community, in every town across this country, some sense of economic independence in a modern age.
“That’s what I call a new economic patriotism,” said Khanna, who has been using that phrase for his pending 2028 campaign.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance is offering a rival 2028 pitch to the billionaires: Government support in exchange for them investing in the productivity and pay of ordinary Americans.
The promise of cheap labor is ” a drug that too many American firms got addicted to … [and] globalization’s hunger for cheap labor is a problem precisely because it’s been bad for innovation,” Vice President JD Vance told an audience of Silicon Valley investors in May.
His low-migration, high-wage alternative has traction among a small subset of billionaires — and would be popular among the millions of ordinary Americans who favor elites who favor fellow Americans.
But Khanna’s threats and the increasingly radical Democratic Party may force some wealthy Americans to accept a Vance-drafted migration compromise in 2028.
Billionaire Response to Khanna
Khanna’s progressive threat is forcing pro-migration billionaires to scramble for political allies and lawyers to derail Khanna and stop the wealth tax. However, potential political supporters have declined to help, largely because the billionaires’ promises of huge campaign donations are not expected to overcome the voters’ desire to reverse their mass poverty with the billionaires’ cash.
Many of the billionaires argue that the ballot grab will force billionaires to flee the state and wreck the state’s lucrative tech industry.
“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 using illegal migration to create an industry of poorly-paid delivery workers. “The blast radius, however, of healthcare for illegal aliens, will be the end of Silicon Valley” in California, said investor Chamath Palihapitiya, a California-based investor who immigrated from Sri Lanka via Canada.
Khanna pushed back. “Those saying that we wouldn’t have a future NVIDIA [Corp.] in the Bay if this tax goes into effect are glossing over Silicon Valley history,” he said, adding: “The idea that they would not start companies to make billions, or take advantage of an innovation cluster, if there is a 1-2 percent tax on their staggering wealth defies common sense and economic theory.
A few billionaires argue that they can win the ballot vote. “I am confident that with Governor Newsom’s staunch opposition and a robust, well-funded campaign, we can defeat this measure when we inform voters of the true consequences for California,” said Ron Conway, one of the most apolitically active investors in the Valley, and a founder of the FWD.us lobby group. He has already donated $100,000 to the campaign, according to the New York Times.
“Billionaires should stop hiding,” said Palihaptiya. “They should be extra vocal. Let’s vote on the [tax ballot] and let the chips fall where it may.”
But progressives are confident they can defeat the billionaires at the ballot. “If I can stand up for a billionaire tax, this is not a hard position for 434 other members or 100 Senators,” Khanna said.
The investor class is making a counteroffer to Khanna. It comes from David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, who now heads the investor-funded FWD.us pro-migration lobby group.
His group was formed in 2013 to help consumer-economy investors and tech investors boost their stock values with a greater inflow of foreign renters, consumers, and workers. But the voters hired President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 to shut down illegal migration, so the group is now paying activists, lawyers, and lobbyists to protect illegal migrants. The group is also trying to keep the backdoor open to legalized migrants, including India’s H-1Bs and other visa workers.
Democrats can regain power from Trump’s populist tide if they focus on making government work for voters, said Plouffe:
If Democrats get better about focusing on results, cutting red tape and getting things done for people, on time and under budget — what’s become known as the abundance agenda — it makes the populist call for higher taxes on the wealthiest even more powerful. Swing voters, much like the Democratic base, believe the richest should pay more. But they don’t think the proceeds will be spent well.
Plouffe’s article was printed by sympathetic op-ed editors at the New York Times, who hid his role at the FWD.us lobby group from the readers.
Plouffe’s “abundance agenda” includes more wage-cutting, government-run Extraction Migration, which he tactfully does not mention in his op-ed.
Billionaires are also looking at lawsuits and the courts as a fallback strategy. “If the tax applies to you, you should know that you will be able to file an injunction with the Franchise Tax Board that will force them to put any money collected into escrow while your lawsuit(s) works its way through state and federal courts,” said investor Palihapitiya, adding:
Fortunately, your odds of winning are high since this tax was designed to be retroactive and the case law on the illegality/unconstitutionality of retroactive “wholly new taxes” is strongly in your favor.
Khanna’s role has enraged many of his former donors in the tech sector. “I don’t think he had any idea what a land mine he was stepping on,” Paul Graham, a leading investor, told the New York Times. “I feel sorry for him, actually,” he added.
“The threat of commie comrade @RoKhanna supporting the tax has already caused half of the $2 trillion of the top wealth to leave already,” said ethnic-Indian investor Vinod Khoalsa. “Amazing how dumb Ro [Khanna] is being all for personal ambition, and doesn’t care he damages California permanently.”
GOP-affiliated investors and ordinary conservatives are watching the progressives’ power grab. “Ro [Khanna] may be ambitious, but he’s not dumb,” said David Sacks, a California investor who is now advising Trump. “Why is it politically advantageous for him to support asset seizures? Because that’s the direction of travel in the Democrat Party.”