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Comment by marojejian | Hacker News Reader

While the concept of progressive wealth taxation is very important and good, executing on such taxes is very hard.

I'm skeptical this bill is actually a positive step in the overall campaign. That said, I think the more discussion about the concept, the better.

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~69% of Gen Z support it. Time to success is a function of the age out rate of the 55+ voting cohort (~2M/year).

> A new CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday found that 69 percent of respondents under 30 favor candidates who support raising taxes on wealthy Americans.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6096809-gen-z-taxes-we...

https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/cms/prod_cms_alt/file/...

> ~69% of Gen Z support it.

Then they should vote more.

Gen Z participated much less than the general electorate in the last election. In 2024 Gen Z voter turnout in the presidential election was 47% vs 65% overall turnout.

Democratic Socialists keep winning elections, so I agree that as long as youth turnout remains high and older voters keep aging out (as death is inevitable), we are on course. The grip of the Olds will weaken eventually. Almost twice as many 55+ voters have died since the last presidential election than margin of victory (relevant because older cohorts tilt conservative per Pew Research). Just gotta keep grinding, and hope that this administration has taught young folks to turn out. Maybe they still won’t, we’ll have to observe and report.

People have been saying that for decades. You need a better strategy.

My best recommendation is to volunteer for a campaign, preferably a state-wide one (you may need to wait for the next primary season). Keep your eyes and ears open and see if you can come up with an explanation for why so many middle-aged Democratic voters become Republican voters.

Lots of people will give you reasons and say they are 100% true. But you’ll quickly see that they don’t match anything you are seeing and hearing yourself. Lots of people will tell you that those people don’t matter and are better off gone. You’ll also quickly see why that’s not true either.

Good luck

I’ve done my research, and while I admit some areas are a lost cause (red states) due to the electoral college giving those states undemocratic over representation, blue counties are 80% of US economic activity and where people will continue to congregate (and where political efforts should be focused) as the US continues to urbanize.

80% of farmers voted for this, and are going to lose their farms because of it. Hispanics voted for this, and are getting deported because they’re finding out they aren’t white adjacent enough. Older voters who did well under capitalism are happy with centrism because they were lucky and wealthy from their luck of good wages and early exposure to real estate and equities (30% of wealth is held by the 70+ cohort per Apollo Group). They don’t want to rock the boat, and have no incentive to improve the future. You’re not going to win hearts and minds of some cohorts. “Progress occurs one funeral at a time.” —- Planck

My father, a conservative who has lost everything because of repeated poor personal choices and who I financially support says, “what, you want the government to take care of you?” while only having Medicare and Social Security besides my help to carry him from his 70s to death, so I am exceptionally familiar with the cognitive dissonance we’re experiencing at scale. Call a spade a spade and move on.

Tracking the Farm Economy in Crisis - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581983 - September 2026

Conservatives are dying at higher rates than liberals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48633921 - June 2026 (14 comments)

Trump’s megabill will hurt the health of his own voters - https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/juan-williams/5387100... - July 7th, 2025

> “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid,” McConnell reportedly told his Senate GOP colleagues at a closed-door luncheon. “But they’ll get over it.”

(he’s finally hurting the people who deserve it; his supporters and voters)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43105986

He's not hurting the people he needs to be hurting - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

> “Progress occurs one funeral at a time.”

That's science, not politics. Scientists don't abandon all they've ever believed and switch to the opposite. Voters do. Why is that? I'm merely suggesting you get some personal experience so you can begin to understand. "We're going to win, just as soon as enough Republicans die of old age" is for fools and young people.

I prefer to call it “hope through demographic trajectories and systems,” to each their own.

Citation:

Are Evangelicals Holding the Line Against Secularization? - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/are-evangelicals-holdi... - October 1st, 2026

> Let’s say we did a random sample of the adult population of Ohio in 1985. In that poll, we found that 55% of people identified as politically conservative and 35% were liberal, with the remaining 10% indicating that they were ideologically moderate. Then, we did another poll of adults in Ohio forty years later. This time we found that conservatives were just 35% and liberals had jumped up to 55%. What could possibly explain that kind of shift?

The desired outcome is that billionaires should pay their "fair share". That's fine, but are the supporters of this sure that this is the best way to do it?

Also, do they know who really is going to eventually pay for this tax? Guess. (It is not most billionaires.)

On top of that, those taxes will require founders to liquidate their holdings and will also affect employees holding the stock as well so it actually hits tech workers harder.

It's bad enough that the large tech companies are now funding AI data centers by selling their own stock. So why would the founders want to tolerate a >$1B-$40B hit to their own net worth for a tax that really is not a one time tax which the threshold of this "wealth tax" will eventually get lowered into the 100M zone?

> That's fine, but are the supporters of this sure that this is the best way to do it?

As I understand, this is the best way to do which we have so far. We are welcome to find a better way while we're using this approach.

How is a marginal land value tax not a far, far better way? It’s already taxed, just need to multiply it by a different number.

What the linked poll asked is "Would you prefer to vote for a candidate for Congress who supports tax increases on wealthy Americans?". I would say yes to that, even though I don't support this specific California tax proposal, and I don't think that's a terribly uncommon perspective.

Publicity is good I think. We want the public to understand that very rich people pay less taxes than the average person. I don't think this is commonly understood, because people get caught up on income statistics, which are an incomplete picture of the accumulation of money.

Taxing gains on the value of anything used in a contract as collateral is a simple and useful start.

That would have wide ranging negative effects on the middle and upper middle classes (and wallstreetbets), consider HELOCs (home equity loan), ag loans using farmland as collateral, and brokerage margin loans.

I’m fine with it provided there’s some sort of minimum level of wealth required to be taxed in this manner. Taxing someone that is using a HELOC to replace their roof on the unrealized equity appreciation would be unfair, and I’m not even a homeowner.

There are better ways to attempt to tax wealth, eliminate the step-up cost basis and asset shielding in trusts and other forms of estate tax avoidance and the issue would correct itself eventually. Unfortunately, politicians in the US will not do this because they need donations from extremely wealthy people who absolutely do not want their estates taxed away. It’s also too easy to hide money in other places, there will always be nations willing to take on tax haven status to reap the benefits. I’m not sure what a practical solution is given the outsized influence of the wealthy all over the world.

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