Will California’s billionaire tax proposal make it to ballots?

Hi and welcome to TechScape. Nick Robins-Early and Dara Kerr here, filling in for your usual host Blake Montgomery who is out on vacation. We’ll be talking about the fight over a proposed billionaire tax in California , the UK’s social media ban and SpaceX making a big buy in the AI arms race. Big week for the California ‘billionaire tax’ The California wealth tax showdown comes to a head this week. After gathering more than double the necessary number of signatures to qualify for the November ballot, there’s still uncertainty that the proposal for a one-time tax on billionaires will make it to voters this fall. This comes even after back-room dealing last week that led the proposal’s proponents to drop the tax from 5% of the wealth of any California resident worth more than $1bn down to a levy of 2%. Tech billionaires have been spending big and lobbying state lawmakers to block the measure. Silicon Valley moguls, including former Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, have donated tens of millions of dollars to Super Pacs aimed at defeating the proposal. Crypto titan Chris Larsen launched an attack ad in May called “Reckless”, which warns the tax “will backfire and hurt you”. Other tech billionaires, like Google co-founder Larry Page, Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, have already fled California or are making moves to leave. …