r/technology • u/marketrent • Aug 16 '26

Society Bernie Sanders calls out Sergey Brin for spending over $100 million to defeat California’s billionaire tax — ‘If California passes its one-time 5% wealth tax, Brin would owe $14 billion and still be worth $270 billion’

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/bernie-sanders-calls-sergey-brin-120113695.html
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u/[deleted] Aug 17 '26

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u/Zestyclose-Height-36 Aug 21 '26

i think taxes pay for better schools, better roads, and more affordable daycare for working people, which is where the fund from the wealth tax are earmarked.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

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u/Zestyclose-Height-36 Aug 21 '26

nothing is ever 100% in anything, but California is huge and has 4 million students currently in school and 177,000 miles of roads in various states of repair. over 1.5 million children require full or partial daycare because their parent or parents must work to support them, and the state has to help supplement what parents can afford through tax breaks and other programs to make it possible for California to maintain the workforce that has made the state into the fourth largest economy in the world. The state’s economy is bigger than Japan, the UK, and whole other countries, and keeping it functional requires funds, which Brim can pay and agiworker picking lettuce in 105 degree temps probably cannot unless you want to pay $45 for a side salad.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

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u/Zestyclose-Height-36 Aug 21 '26

I am well aware of the necessity of both government and taxes, and that the wealthiest people pay politicians to reduce their taxes to the point where the US national debt is $360,000 per taxpayer. and unless the rich start paying a larger share of the cost of the US standard of living, the American experiment will go down in history as capitalisms biggest failure to date.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26

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u/Zestyclose-Height-36 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 24 '26

for a lot of people that is true, but the tipping point into total chaos is still on the horizon. AI induced mass layoffs of middle management will get us there because the worst so far has been crushing poor people, who no American cares much about, and the cult of individualism is still trumpeting that being poor is a personal failure, not the structural one it is. when enough of the former middle feels the real pain of the K, then the real mess starts.