The Wealth Tax Will Put California on the Road to Serfdom, by Auguste Meyrat

By Auguste Meyrat, Crisis Magazine, June 10, 2026

Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher and department chair in north Texas. He has a BA in Arts and Humanities from University of Texas at Dallas and an MA in Humanities from the University of Dallas.

Sheer unbridled envy is the driving force behind California’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires.

This November, Californians will be voting on the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act,” a new wealth tax that would essentially seize 5 percent of the accumulated wealth of the state’s billionaires. Unlike a tax on income, sales, or property, this tax would target the non-liquid assets where the ultra-wealthy keep their fortunes.

Defending this new tax in an essay for The New York Times, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman use Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg as an example. In terms of taxable income, Zuckerberg “reported more than $7.1 billion…$181 million in compensation, $1.4 billion in dividends and $5.6 billion in gains from selling stock.” Although the 27 percent that Zuckerberg pays on $7.1 billion (around $1.91 billion) sounds like a large enough sum, 5 percent of the $206 billion he is worth (over $10 billion) is obviously much more. …

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