Unions chase the new billionaires tax

By Friends in the news,

This month the Freedom Foundation’s Aaron Withe wrote an insightful piece in the popular Hill news site, on the new trend of billionaires taxes in America.

Here is an excerpt:

“This month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation that would impose a 5 percent annual wealth tax on the roughly 1,000 Americans whose net worth exceeds $1 billion.The proposal is a nonstarter in the current Congress, but Sanders intends to use it as a litmus test for 2028 Democratic presidential candidates.It has attracted a coalition of supporters — chief among them government employee unions”

Aaron further explains, “Their membership, their revenue and their political influence all depend on an expanding public payroll. According to a recent Commonwealth Foundation report, the nation’s four largest public-sector unions — the NEA, AFT, SEIU and AFSCME — collectively spent $915 million on elections and progressive political activism during the 2024 election cycle. Eighty-six percent of that money came straight from member dues, meaning that unions spent more on politics than they did on representing the workers who paid for it.Case in point: When California lawmakers proposed a nearly identical 5 percent billionaire wealth tax in that state, Teamsters California — representing 250,000 members — wholeheartedly endorsed it. SEIU-UHW West also put money behind the ballot initiative. Meanwhile, the prospect of the tax prompted an exodus. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, director Steven Spielberg and venture capitalist Peter Thiel are among those who have established residency elsewhere. “

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