Laurel Rosenhall

Great to be here.

Thank you.

Well, this is coming at a moment when there is a lot of anxiety about economic inequality.

You know, a lot of people are feeling squeezed about affordability.

In California, the electorate is very anti-Trump and feeling somewhat angry about that.

some of the cuts that he's done and the ways that he seems to be favoring billionaires.

And so people are feeling emotional about that.

And this tax has ignited a big pushback from many billionaires who are spending tens of millions of dollars to fight it.

And the scope of this tax and the structure of this tax is very unusual.

And that's part of the reason it's just generating such a firestorm.

So this would place a 5% tax on the net worth of any billionaires who are California residents as of January 1st of this year.

The money would go into a special fund at the state level and

and would have to be spent on healthcare services.

It's unusual to tax the assets of a person as opposed to their income.

So their assets would be their stocks, the jewelry they own, the cars in their garage, the paintings.

Anything that contributes to their wealth.

Notably, it does not include residential property.

So that's kind of an interesting exemption.

And then it's also unusual on the revenue side to create a special fund where the money would go and that it could only be used for this one purpose.

So unlike most of the tax dollars that the state collects, which go into what's called the general fund, and then the elected leaders of the state government decide how to spend it, this is requiring that 90% of it be spent specifically on health care.