00:01I mean I think what's happening in California is people like Sergey are
00:04getting involved in a way that we haven't seen in a long time so he has
00:10spent over 50 million dollars trying to kind of oppose this wealth tax that's
00:15taking that is being proposed in California and we start out this story
00:20by talking about this interaction he had with the state's governor Gavin Newsom
00:25it actually took place at a Christmas party by another billionaire crypt
00:30crypto titan Chris Larson and him Sergey Brin and Gavin Newsom were in a tree
00:35house and Gavin Newsom was confronted by Sergey and then weeks later Sergey left
00:42the state for Nevada and started bankrolling this political fight we're
00:46seeing right now we've seen so many stories about these executives leaving
00:50the state when you when you actually crunch the numbers and look at okay the
00:54Mark Zuckerberg purchase of a home in Florida Peter Thiel left a few years
01:00ago you have Sergey Brin as you feature in the piece when you crunch the numbers is
01:05it just a couple prominent and very incredibly wealthy individuals who've
01:09left or are they are they all leaving that's a really good question I mean the
01:14the people that we've seen leave definitely Sergey is one Larry Page also
01:20Google co-founder Peter Thiel has claimed to have left the state as well I think
01:27there's a handful of very vocal and very wealthy people but not everyone I mean
01:32Jensen Huang is still in California and he's kind of been on the other side
01:37saying hey like you guys can tax me essentially whatever you're gonna tax me it's the
01:42price of doing business in California what exactly is the tax so what is it like it's
01:48not something that we have to worry about no but I'm just curious because you
01:52know I mean is it gonna make them destitute and I'm just trying to
01:56understand here totally so the tax is a one-time five percent levy on wealth
02:04above a billion dollars so this is their illiquid holdings in their stock assets
02:10it could also be levied on fine art and vehicles I think what makes a lot of people
02:17like Sergey nervous is the way they've read the proposal they think it's also
02:23going to tap tax their voting interest in a company which often outweighs their
02:28actual financial holdings within the company so that is actually up to debate
02:33and the people that have drafted the measure say this is not going to tax your
02:38voting interest but your voting stake within the company but that is kind of
02:42spurred Sergey and others to be very concerned about this and is it going to
02:47make them destitute I don't think so but it will definitely raise tens of
02:52billions of dollars if it was passed and survive some you know legal hurdles that
02:58it's sure to face Eliyahu the as you point out in the piece Gavin Newsom the
03:02governor he does not support this he said in a statement quote the governor has been
03:07very clear with everyone no matter who they are that this effort will do serious
03:11damage to the state including for public safety workers and schools at the expense
03:14of one special interest group can you talk about the group that's that argues
03:18that this would be a good tax why why they're doing it and actually if there's a
03:24chance that this thing actually passes because the way you described it and I
03:27think a lot of critics have said this would be a really hard thing to actually
03:30implement because some of the because because wealth is very difficult to to
03:34actually especially stuff that's not tangible to actually determine yeah the
03:41group behind it is SCIU UHW it's Service Employees International United and then the
03:49health care union branch of them their subset and they're led by this guy named
03:55Dave Reagan and he has been a real big proponent of using ballot measures in
04:01California to kind of affect policy change so what they have kind of realized
04:06is they can raise you know spend the millions of dollars to qualify something
04:11for the ballot by gathering signatures and that could have a tens of billions of
04:16dollars impact so so their kind of policy here is they're saying the HR 1 bill
04:24that the Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump have passed that's leading to a
04:29lot that's going to lead to hundreds of millions billions of dollars I think it's
04:33up maybe up to a trillion in Medicare and MediCal cuts over the next decade and
04:39they're looking for ways to backfill that and they think that this is the way to
04:43go about it which is taxing billionaires in California getting at their wealth is
04:48going to be very complicated it's not something you can just snap your fingers it
04:52would be kind of a years-long assessment of these how much they have stored in
04:58in their houses and their companies but they have been kind of fairly clever in
05:05crafting this legislation or this this ballot measure because it has a
05:10retroactive clause so anyone that was living in California as of January 1st
05:152026 would be qualified for this so if you left January 2nd they're still
05:22going to try and get some tax revenue for you Sergey Brin left the state ahead of
05:28January 1st he moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe he bought a mansion in this
05:33town called Incline Village and he's claiming to have left the state so some
05:38people left ahead of it some people have left after but it is gonna be a big fight
05:43if it does pass if you know whether the question oh sorry go ahead no I was just
05:48gonna say but alphabet still in the state right alphabet still in the state yes I
05:54mean Silicon Valley has a huge poll it's a hard place to leave the entire AI boom is
05:59taking place there people want to be in offices and it's it's not an easy time to
06:05kind of leave the state and try and you know work remotely or commute into the state so I think
06:12the union
06:14behind this is is understanding that this is a time to kind of strike and and there's
06:19also you know anti-billionaire sentiment and there's an idea that this is the
06:24right time to go after this revenue
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