427 The California Government Wants Your Assets | Different
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On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, let us talk about California.
California is considering something that has never existed in American history: a tax not on what you earn, but on what you own. The proposed Billionaire Tax Act would impose a 5% levy on the total net worth of any California resident worth over $1 billion. But calling it a billionaire tax is misleading, because the consequences reach far beyond the ultra-wealthy.
This proposal carries buried constitutional changes, economic risks, and a framework that could eventually touch small business owners, family farmers, solo consultants, and startup founders across the state and potentially the nation. So today, let us dive deeper into the topic.
You’re listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let’s go.
What This Tax Actually Is
Sacramento is framing this as a simple, one-time fix targeting the ultra-rich. The reality is far more complicated. This is an asset seizure tax, a government mechanism to reach into what people have already built and extract a percentage of it annually.
Most billionaires do not hold 5% of their net worth in cash. That means the state would effectively be forcing asset liquidations just to satisfy the tax bill. That is not a technicality. That is a fundamental shift in how government relates to private wealth.
Who Really Gets Hit
The Hoover Institution ran over 71 economic simulations and found that California ends up poorer under this proposal. Six publicly confirmed billionaires, including Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Peter Thiel, have already announced departures. An attorney representing just four clients collectively worth over $600 billion confirmed their quiet relocations as well.
When billionaires leave, they take their income taxes with them permanently. The state’s own Legislative Analyst’s Office projects ongoing decreases in income tax revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars per year as a direct result of this proposal.
The Constitutional Trap Nobody Is Talking About
This is where the proposal becomes genuinely alarming for everyone, not just billionaires. The tax requires a constitutional amendment that removes existing protections against taxing intangible personal property, including stocks, private equity stakes, and intellectual capital.
That constitutional change does not expire. Once it exists, future legislators and ballot initiatives can lower the threshold, expand the scope, and reach further down the economic ladder without needing to clear the same legal barrier again. The Hoover Institution has described it plainly as constitutional infrastructure for future wealth taxes. California has done this before with Prop 19, which was sold as protection for seniors but quietly eliminated inheritance protections for family farms and small business properties. The playbook is the same: appealing villain, clean bumper sticker, buried consequences.
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