Taxing California’s Ultrawealthy: Steyer’s Bid to Balance Revenue, Regulation, and Elite Retention Amidst Structural Inequality
Original framing: “Tom Steyer Wants to Save California From Billionaires. But Also Doesn’t Want Them to Leave” — Wired
Research shows that progressive taxation alone does not reduce wealth inequality without complementary policies like worker ownership, public banking, or land value taxes. Studies on tax avoidance by the ultrawealthy (e.g., Zucman 2019) reveal that billionaires often pay effective tax rates lower than nurses, undermining the premise that 'taxing them more' will solve structural issues. AI regulation, as framed in Steyer’s plan, risks becoming a tool for corporate capture unless grounded in democratic oversight and public interest technology.
Steyer’s campaign embodies the contradictions of neoliberal progressivism, where billionaires are both the problem and the solution—a framing that obscures the structural violence of financialized capitalism.
The reliance on billionaire wealth for public revenue is a historical artifact of California’s tax structure, which has long privileged property owners and corporate elites while underfunding Black and Latino communities. Indigenous and Global South critiques reveal that wealth accumulation is not a neutral economic act but a relational one, tied to land, labor, and communal responsibility. A systemic solution requires dismantling the extractive systems that produce billionaires in the first place, replacing them with democratic ownership, reparative justice, and public infrastructure. The trickster’s laughter at this paradox underscores the absurdity of expecting elites to fund their own undoing—unless power is wrested from their hands entirely.