Let me congratulate the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and other unions for gathering the signatures necessary to include a 5% wealth tax for billionaires on the California ballot in November.
At a time of enormous and growing income and wealth inequality, this initiative is more necessary than ever. If approved, it would raise $100 billion from just 200 billionaires in California who are collectively worth more than $2 trillion. That revenue would prevent millions of low-income and working-class Californians from losing health and nutrition assistance due to President Trump's disastrous “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Here is the simple truth. In California and across the country, as working families struggle to survive, the billionaire class has never had it so good.
Last year, the five richest people in California became $300 billion richer. Nationwide, after receiving one of the largest tax breaks in modern history, 938 billionaires increased their wealth by $1.5 trillion. Incredibly, the world's richest man, Elon Musk, now owns more wealth than the poorest 53% of American households.
This extreme inequality is not an aberration. In the past six years, American billionaires have more than doubled their wealth, earning more than $4.6 trillion. In fact, since 1975, nearly $80 trillion has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
While the very rich get much richer, more than 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Nearly half of older workers have nothing saved for retirement. More than 20% of seniors in the United States are trying to survive on less than $15,000 a year. In California, the child poverty rate has nearly tripled in just five years to nearly 19%.
Despite enormous advances in productivity and technology, the average American worker today earns $28 a week less than he did 53 years ago, adjusting for inflation.
Bottom line: As a nation, this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is a problem we can no longer ignore and must confront.
Now, it should surprise no one that, while poll after poll shows strong public support for this initiative, the billionaire class is working overtime to defeat it.
I understand why Mark Zuckerberg, worth $237 billion, would rather spend $100 million on his third yacht than pay more taxes. I understand why Larry Ellison, worth $218 billion, would rather spend $500 million on a private island in Hawaii than worry about the plight of working families.
But this is what I don't understand. Why are opponents of this initiative unwilling to honestly debate this issue? Why are they not willing to discuss the morality of their position?
I'd love to hear opponents like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, and other billionaires explain why they think it's more important for them not to pay their fair share of taxes while hospitals close, children go hungry, and cancer patients are evicted because they can't afford expensive treatment.
Instead of addressing that issue, billionaires threaten to punish the people of California. They claim that if voters approve a modest tax on billionaires, they will leave the state and take their businesses with them. Let's be clear: that is extortion.
What these billionaires are really saying is that democracy doesn't apply to them: that if the majority acts in their own self-interest, the billionaires will retaliate.
But here's the good news: the American people are taking notice.
They are tired of billionaires paying a lower tax rate than the average worker while struggling with the rising costs of health care, food, housing, gasoline and prescription drugs.
They're tired of corporations like Disney, Tesla, Palantir, and Ticketmaster making billions in profits and paying nothing in federal income taxes, while more than 60,000 Americans die each year because they can't afford to see a doctor.
They are tired of billionaires like Brin spending $57 million to defeat this billionaire tax while their wealth has grown by more than $120 billion since Trump was elected.
Across the country, people are sick and tired of the greed and arrogance of the billionaire class. They demand an economy that works for everyone.
That's why I introduced legislation to establish a 5% annual tax on the wealth of America's 938 billionaires who are collectively worth more than $8.2 trillion and represent just 0.000003% of our population. Over a decade, this bill would raise $4.4 trillion.
If this legislation were passed, in its first year, it would provide every man, woman and child in a household earning $150,000 or less a direct payment of $3,000; that is, $12,000 for a family of four.
It would address the housing crisis by providing the resources necessary to build 7 million units of low-income and affordable housing and apartments.
Would expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing services.
It would guarantee universal child care.
I would strengthen public education by ensuring that no teacher earns less than $60,000 a year.
I would expand home health care so that seniors and people with disabilities can live with dignity in their own homes.
And it would restore health care to the 15 million Americans who are losing it under Trump.
All this would be paid for with an annual 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires.
No one worth less than a billion dollars would pay a penny more in taxes.
My critics claim that this legislation is “punitive” and “confiscatory.” Actually?
If this bill were in effect this year, Elon Musk would pay $39 billion more in taxes, leaving him “only” $737 billion to survive.
Jeff Bezos would also owe about $14 billion more in taxes and still have $265 billion left to put a roof over his head.
Meanwhile, life would improve dramatically for hundreds of millions of Americans, and the richest people in this country would barely notice a decline in their net worth.
Nearly a century ago, Justice Louis Brandeis said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
What he said was true in 1933. It is even more accurate today. In the year 2026, let us choose democracy instead of oligarchy. Let's demand that billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. And let's build a society that works for the many, not the few.
Senator Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the United States Senate.
