California's Billionaire Tax Has the Signatures to Make the Ballot

sfstandard.com

22 points·m463··10 comments

Really paying taxes is fine, we have representation issues to fix, but we all gotta pay our fair share.

imo the problem is the special treatment of rich people and the way it encourages middle income people to act like temporarily embarrassed oligarchs instead of citizens of a republic.

> special treatment of rich people

which?

Tax loopholes which result in a lower effective tax rate. Lesser accountability for crimes. Ability to break any law which is penalized only with fines.

Do you really not know what rich people can get away with in the US?

I see special treatment of many non-rich people too, so I do not see the issue to be with the rich.

It's not about the special treatment, its about being equal under the law.

I agree 100%, we all should be, but in today's America, the most "specially treated" are not rich, so if you are to hate people for being special under law, it is not the rich you should be hating first.

Well, if “specially treated” also includes “especially poorly treated”, then sure, there’s plenty of non-rich being “specially treated”. Take your pick from the non-rich subsets of immigrants, trans, kinda-Mexican-looking, pregnant-and-crossing-state-lines...

You misunderstand, I don't hate rich people, I want them to be accountable to a democratic system of governance aka paying their owed tax.

They all pay their owed tax. If you dislike the tax law that allows them to pay as much as they do, change it.

That's the idea!

Like I said, there are representation issues because money is speech which gives the rich extra say in policy. So it's not exactly that simple, because of the anti-democratic pro-rich bias in our legislative system, but we'll get there.

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