[bhouston]

He is probably going after Ro Khanna, who comes across as a pretty decent rep (he and Massie got the Epstein files released):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro_Khanna

Based on this warning from Garry to Ro re: wealth tax

https://finviz.com/news/277038/y-combinators-garry-tan-warns...

So this appears to be all about the wealth tax and taken down anyone who supports it.

AIPAC is also mad at Ro so it seems that Garry Tan can find common cause with them:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1GRXZqcQiU/?mibextid=wwXIfr

[khuey]

Ironically Ro Khanna was the tech backed candidate a decade ago when he ran against Mike Honda.

[tw04]

Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so infuriating.

All they can talk about is how they’re all going to leave the state if it happens, but then are more than willing to try to spend more stopping it than they would just contributing their fair share in taxes.

Don’t like it? Great, leave - but stop trying to buy elections.

[CuriouslyC]

YC is always talking about how important SF is (due to hand waiving reasons like "innovation environment," I would find it highly ironic if a wealth tax was all it took to get top YC people to abandon the state.

[johnnyanmac]

You can take your money, but you can't take the pwoerhouse institutions nor good weather California brings. The invisible hand will happily fill any vacancies.

[kadabra9]

Everyone loves deciding what their "fair share" of other people's net worth (not even income!) is.

Sorry, but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness, and rightfully opens up questions about slippery slope, how "temporary" they claim this to be, and so on.

It's not surprising they are leaving the state or using their resources to try to stop it.

[bhouston]

Your statement is ignoring the systematic growing inequality in the US between the ultra wealthy and everyone else. And the use of those funds to influence politics (because of Citizens United, etc) to create polices that benefit themselves - it is for the ultra wealthy a virtuous circle:

https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/

This is not a normal state of affairs.

[kadabra9]

This tax would do effectively nothing to address growing inequality between billionaires and everyone else.

[mjamesaustin]

I see, so you're suggesting 5% is not enough? I'm listening...

[kadabra9]

You could confiscate 100% of the wealth of every billionaire in this country and it wouldn’t fund the government for an entire year. It is and always will be a government spending issue, the government can’t help itself but to just steal more from the taxpayers to support their bloat.

[johnnyanmac]

>but the state just confiscating 5% of someone's net worth (unrealized or not) is absolute madness

why? The federal government is taking around 22% from me this year and I'm in a low bracket. If I had the money from my last full time job in tech it'd be 24%. You're saying billionaires shouldn't pay the state they reside in 5% more?

Tanentially, that's only one bracket despite it being triple the salary. gotta love that part time minimum wage work in CA still pushes me that close to my financial peaks.

[kadabra9]

The government is taking 22% of your INCOME. Not your entire net worth. This is vastly different.

HNW don’t have their net worth sitting in a pool of cash like Donald Duck as much as Reddit would like to believe. Its property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.

to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court

[bdangubic]

> property, company stock, any unrealized gains in different equities, etc.

it is only “unrealized” when they have to pay taxes. but walk into a bank and ask for a loan (which is of course what they do) and all of a sudden that shit is all “realized” and here’s millions of dollars to ya…

[kadabra9]

That’s a separate discussion.

I think there should be some sort of tax penalty to borrowing against assets as a sort of infinite money glitch.

[johnnyanmac]

>to have to go through the administrative burden of valuing all that, and then attempting to liquidate at some reasonable market value just to pay one time levy (allegedly lol) is insane, and will rightfully be challenged in court

Cool, let's do it. We know the IRS, especially when auditing the rich tend to be one of the highest value employees of government they will sue no matter how cut and clear the tax code is anyway.

Its really weird we're on HN and we're using an excuse of "but it's hard, so let's not do it". I didn't choose tech because it was easy. Why should the government we fund be just as defeatist?

[kadabra9]

Of course its easy for you to say - its simple to just point the finger and claim you're entitled to your "fair share" of someone else's property simply because they have more than you. And my main point isn't even that "its hard" (which it is), its that governments cannot simply just tax and confiscate their way to a utopia.

Fortunately for sanity and common sense, this proposal, if it even passes, will surely be challenged on Federal and State constitutional grounds.

[givemeethekeys]

Where does the money go? Facebook and Google ads?

[bhouston]

A lot of it does. And it also goes to companies making inauthentic social media content. This is what modern election campaigns are.

[RobotToaster]

How many AI deepfake companies has y-combinator invested in?

[rchaud]

- Pro-business think tanks to write "policy reports" with a predetermined outcome

- PR firms that can get their policy mouthpieces on cable TV news

- Police unions to get their endorsement (a favorite of "law and order" candidates)

- TV and radio ads for preferred candidates

- Online influencers and podcasters

- Telemarketing campaigns

- and of course, "campaign contributions"

[learingsci]

A wealth tax is not an obviously great idea. It’s worth having a better public debate on that topic.

[bhouston]

I bet Garry Tan will find that going after him for the wealth tax won’t poll well so he will find a different angle. Thus it won’t be a debate about a wealth tax, it will just be the standard make your opponent look bad in order to unseat him.

For example: https://nypost.com/2026/02/01/us-news/stunning-number-of-cal...

[terminalshort]

Ok, so what is the problem here? Why can't Gary Tan engage in standard political activity like anybody else? This is his fundamental right as a citizen of a democracy.

[bhouston]

The issue is unlimited spending. Rich people can tilt the political system to benefit themselves by their ability to spend unlimited and then push for things that enrich themselves like lower taxes that doesn’t benefit society at large.

The biggest example of this in the US is the health system that is more expensive and has worse outcomes than other countries. There is a huge and growing gap in the us between ultra wealthy and the rest of the population and it is a virtuous circle for the ultra wealthy with their ability to spend unlimited in politics.

[amarcheschi]

The more money you have, the more means you have to engage in political activity not like anybody else but with a weight which far exceeds one

[terminalshort]

So what? The constitution guarantees you equal rights under the law and an equal vote in each election. It does not guarantee you equal political influence. Same as you have the right to freedom of speech and of the press, but you are not guaranteed an audience.

[amarcheschi]

So some people might feel slightly annoyed by this.

I don't know if you don't find this absurd, but a bunch of pedophile protecting people have shaped the actual presidency and are continuing to do so. Feeling slightly annoyed is the least offensive way I could put it

[toraway]

Who's stopping him? Are we all required to be cheering him on for it too?

[terminalshort]

No one is stopping him, but they would be if the people in this comment section had their way. You are absolutely not required to cheer him on, and in fact you have the right to oppose him. But that isn't happening here. Nobody in these comments is exercising their first amendment rights to argue against any of his political opinions. They are using their first amendment rights to argue that the government should use its monopoly to restrict Gary Tan's right to make his argument at all.

[toraway]

I am not seeing that anywhere from the OP in the chain of comments you replied to.

[sa-code]

I’ve heard about a borrowing tax as an alternative, because that’s when paper money becomes spending money

I would love to see that discussed

[terminalshort]

I want to do some improvements on my house. So I take out a home equity loan. Oops! Actually since my house is worth $500K more than when I bought it, now I have to pay $100K to the government since the gain is now realized by using the asset as collateral!

[sa-code]

You get points for effective use of rhetoric, but it's more of a solvable challenge and not a deal breaker.

The goal of a borrowing tax would be to prevent someone with a a $200 mil stock portfolio living off the "buy, borrow, die" strategy and not home equity loans on mere middle class millionaires.

Capital gains, for example, on a primary residence already have an exclusion of a certain amount. There's no reason a borrowing tax can't kick in only after one has let's say 10mil in assets or securities.

Heck, you could even exempt primary residences regardless of value, so you should be fine

edit: here's an explanation of the buy, borrow, die strategy for those who are interested https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyBorrowDieExplained/comments/1f26...

[terminalshort]

The buy borrow die strategy is made up and absolutely laughable to anybody who knows anything about finance. It is not used by anybody.

[sa-code]

Were you able to understand the explanation in the link?

[_DeadFred_]

I mean most taxes like this have an 'above X amount' clause. Such as the gains you get taxed on when selling your home. California it's $500K in gains if you are married so extrapolating that your scenario would be covered.

[pbreit]

The only reasonable argument I can think of is that the fantastic wealth accumulated at the top was substantially driven by the $37 trillion of debt the USA finds itself in. And it needs to be clawed back somehow.

[terminalshort]

It's actually much simpler than that. We need to pay down the debt, and because the rich have most of the money they are going to need to do most of the paying down whether or not they directly are responsible for it or benefited from it. It's simple math. But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid. Income an capital gains rates can be increased.

[johnnyanmac]

>But what does this have to do with a wealth tax? The entire concept is stupid.

Why do you think that?

[terminalshort]

Here's a good explanation from an economist: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/theres-not-that-much-wealth-in...

[asveikau]

I feel like public discussion of this has been outgoing since around 12 years ago when Thomas Piketty's book came out.

[mattmanser]

I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?

The ultra-rich are taking too great a share of every nations wealth. And they keep taking more.

Taxes are the only option to redistribute wealth.

Or are you talking about enabling strong unions and anti-monopoly laws with teeth to reverse the growth?

As I doubt Garry's in favour of that either.

[asveikau]

> I don't really see any other solution, can you explain it?

One reason a wealth tax is controversial and less precedented is that it taxes unrealized gains.

Another alternative would be to raise taxes on high income rather than wealth. In the 1950s people were taxed at something like 90% for every dollar over $400,000. We could go back to something like that but adjust that $400,000 to something like a couple of million, to match inflation.

This essentially puts a cap on wages. The money you make below the cap would be taxed at the same rates we pay today. Once you get above that amount, you keep most of what falls below, but the government would take almost all of what's above the cap.

I think if you do it that way you would also have to tax interest and capital gains similarly to wages. That's another loophole that's very commonly exploited in the last few decades, investment income gets taxed lower.

[terminalshort]

Taking? From who? They got this money by appropriation and not by mutually agreed upon transactions?

[johnnyanmac]

Taking via

- government lobbying for tax codes and loopholes, made specifically to benefit them

- abuse of various systems like H1B's and even SNAP (e.g. Wal-Mart) to subsidize their lack of payment to american taxpayers

- extracting value from public research (funded by taxpayers) and creating private products for sale. Sometimes they may even try to patent such breakthroughs for themelves despite public invention

- engaging in dark patterns and anti-competitive, anti-union behavior to extract wealth in ways that would potentially be proven illegal... had they not paid off the judges

- Performing untold of, actually illegal grifts (cases like SBF are only the tip of the iceberg)

And at this rate we may have to throw in "abusing funds to protect against the most heinous criminals imaginable".

Need I go on? There's pratically no such thing as a billionaire who earned their net worth.

[johnnyanmac]

https://lao.ca.gov/BallotAnalysis/Initiative/2025-024

I'm voting for it if it passes. Big if, though. Almost like the 1% opposed have inordinate power in politics.

[zozbot234]

A wealth tax is a great idea if your goal is to make everyone a whole lot poorer especially in the longer term, and not very much otherwise. It's pretty much saying that you want pure populist envy to be the priority, over and to the detriment of long-term prosperity.

[johnnyanmac]

Compared to the "prosperity" we have now?

[RobotToaster]

Has anyone checked the Epstein files for his name?