Oh, the Horror! Billionaires Threatened with Taxation

Jim Hightower
Tue, 24 Mar 2026 23:00:00 -0700
Opinion

We Americans are barraged these days with multiple crises, so I hate to add anything else to our list of worries.

But I'm told this one is an epic disaster, so we must respond! It started in California, and one financial leader there now calls it "the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt." Holy Titanic! What can it be?

Uh ... it's a tax. Does that mean it would add to the burden of hard-hit poor and middle-class families? No, it wouldn't apply to them at all, or even to mere millionaires. Rather, it's a ballot initiative to put a one-time wealth tax on the uber-rich — the billionaire class. Indeed, only about 200 royally rich California folks would pay anything under this proposal.
Updated: Wed Mar 25, 2026

We Americans are barraged these days with multiple crises, so I hate to add anything else to our list of worries.

But I'm told this one is an epic disaster, so we must respond! It started in California, and one financial leader there now calls it "the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt." Holy Titanic! What can it be?

Uh ... it's a tax. Does that mean it would add to the burden of hard-hit poor and middle-class families? No, it wouldn't apply to them at all, or even to mere millionaires. Rather, it's a ballot initiative to put a one-time wealth tax on the uber-rich — the billionaire class. Indeed, only about 200 royally rich California folks would pay anything under this proposal.

But those billionaires are squealing like stuck pigs, and they've hired hordes of lobbyists, lawyers, PR flacks, and front groups to try to kill the proposal. Such overprivileged plutocratic ninnies as Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg have even declared that, By Gollies, they will just pack up and leave California if required to pay a pittance of their fortunes to support the basic needs of common people.

Californians, though, seem not to care. In recent surveys, only 28% of the state's voters oppose the wealth tax. Indeed, nationwide, 60% of us want billionaire tax dodgers to start paying their fair share.

People are sick of the greed of ... well, let's call them what they are: The filthy rich. There's a fast-spreading attitudinal shift from the right-wing's long insistence that the rich are to be admired and coddled. Instead, majorities today are reconnecting to the eternal truth that "The Love of Money is the root of all evil."

BIRDS OF GREED FLOCKING TO FLORIDA'S TAX-FREE NESTS

Oh, gosh, there goes another one — another billionaire "flighty bird," angrily flitting away from the home nest that long nurtured him.

This latest one is Howard Schultz, the high-flying, avaricious avian who tucked away a multibillion-dollar personal fortune as the monopolistic, exploitative CEO of the Starbucks coffee chain. Howard has recently fallen into a deep pout over the downright rudeness he says he's received from officials in his home base of Washington State.

What's his gripe? Haven't you heard? He squawks, the state legislature intends to make rich corporatists like me start paying income taxes!

Indeed, Washington is one of only nine states with no income tax, even on billionaires. Instead, to fund public needs, it relies on regressive sales taxes paid by poor and middle-income consumers. So, in an overdue stand for fairness and the Common Good, the state is levying a minimal tax on those few elites who haul in more than a million bucks a year — with the money going to such crucial public needs as child care.

But damn the need, Billionaire Schultz is foot-stomping furious that he would have to pay his fair share for the upkeep of the state that has helped him thrive. So, Howard has taken flight, winging clear across the country to Florida, where the right-wing governor and legislature shield the rich from pesky taxes.

Proving that "Birds of a feather flock together," the aristocratic chieftains of such other corporate fiefdoms as Amazon, Meta, and Google are also now nesting in Florida's tax-evasion enclaves. When billionaires declare "We're all in this together" — they don't mean you and me — only themselves and their tax lawyers.