SPEAKER_00 0:00

California billionaire tax. So what does that mean? I'm not a billionaire. Who cares? Well, people might want to care. So California has been lacking in tax revenue to the point where they want to collect a one-time five percent tax on net worth of California Thai billionaires as of January 1st, 2026. This is a proposal. Um it has not passed. Will it go on the ballot? There needs to be about 900,000 signatures for a citizen to you know get something on the ballot, and for people who feel displaced, people who feel like the state is not being run well. I don't think that you know 900,000 signatures will take that much to be collected. Uh they're saying that it will be paid in 2027. And what does that really mean for the state, right? So about 200 individuals, plus or minus a few, uh, are deemed to be billionaires in California. The total net worth is roughly 2.1 trillion dollars. So if you collect 5% of a trillion, you would get 50 billion. Sounds great. Sounds great. Um couple of caveats though, to for a lot of people with that much wealth, you never have it in cash, never ever, almost never ever. And people would have to cash out their stocks, their you know, assets, investment real estate, and then pay the taxes on that, which are called capital gains, and then have five percent left over to collect a hundred billion, they must sell 200 billion worth of assets. And I think that is a very interesting proposal when California already doesn't even have control of all the money that they're missing. Maybe you can help, you know, uh educate the audience on that. But there's billions of dollars, you know, going supposedly going into uh the homeless problem, the light rail that's supposed to be built that has like 40 billion a year going to it, that nobody has seen a single track laid. What are your what are your thoughts on this, Peter? Do you think it's a good thing? Do you think we should collect because billionaires are doing well and just hey, it won't hurt them, right? They'll still have 95%. Or you do you disagree with this?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah, I mean, it you know, it sounds theoretically, it's like, okay, and uh there's a lot of thoughts here. Theoretically, it's like, okay, that's great. We can, you know, instantly tax the rich. It won't, you know, hurt their, obviously, it won't hurt their uh well-being, right? They're still going to be rich. Um, let's tax them, get some of the money, and uh, you know, fill some of the, I guess, the if deficiencies that we have in the state. So that I mean that that theoretically sounds uh great. It doesn't affect the middle class or the poor class, which is the majority of us. I think the problem here is that I think it was France who tried something like this. And, you know, there's already been a huge mass exodus out of California. Everybody knows this. You know, it's probably one of the highest amounts of people who are leaving California because of their ridiculous laws and tax laws. And, you know, honestly, the way that the place is run, if you just go out on the street. I went there recently and I'm I'm looking around, I'm like, what is going on? I there's clothes and junk and poop everywhere in the city of LA. Literally. Oh, dude, I've been to California. So I went to San Francisco. Oh, sorry, uh, San Francisco before. And I was like, this is the worst. This was like, you know, shortly, gosh, was this 2019? This is even before COVID. And I was like, this place is worse, way worse than Seattle. This place is a jungle. What is going on? There's homeless people everywhere, just everywhere on the street. And I just went there uh, you know, a few months ago, and I'm like, what is going on? Like this, there's there's just junk and crap all over and homeless people. And it's just so when you look out there, and you know, everybody knows about the you know, the the what's going on with the theft and you know the crimes out there, you know, uh people are getting their cars broken into all the time. I mean, you hear about it, but it's true. And so the problem is that people are going to be leaving California. These these big players who are generating taxes, right? Or they're they're generating taxes um in the sense that, you know, they're paying some taxes, but also their employees are paying for taxes because they employ a lot of people. That's why we get tax breaks. And so I think what's gonna happen is they are, I mean, they're already like right here, right at the end. They're like, I I am so done with this place. This place was a beautiful place, and it just became so, so crappy. But I think that's gonna push them over the edge where they're gonna be like, I'm screw this, I'm not doing this, I'm not messing with this, which is that's going to exacerbate the problem, which is exactly what happened in France. Another thing you mentioned is I think the trust for the government there is very little. I think for the majority, uh, the trust there has significantly decreased. And so you mentioned, you know, the homeless problem. Again, it's so bad out there. This is just as an example. Uh, I believe it's $25 to $40 billion have gone into homeless intervention. Okay. $55 to 40 billion. We hear billion all the time. We're just like, ah, you know, it's a little money. Dude, that is an insane amount of money. Um, and and we don't realize that. Like a million's a lot of money, but then billions. And so where is this money going to? Because obviously, if you look at the statistics, the homeless situation has not gotten better. It actually has gotten worse and exacerbated. And so, where is this money going? Same thing with what you mentioned about the Link 21. They haven't laid a single track, and yet there's a lot of like there's millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars that have gone into this project. And you know, you don't see anything, right? You don't see any uh fruit from it. So I think with all of that, I think, yeah, it's I I think it's gonna be a pretty bad idea. How are they going to solve this issue with the deficiency? I don't really know, but I could tell you, I I I think making this move will affect California in a horrible way. And I guess the question is, how will it affect the the average people, like the middle class? What do you what do you think? That something like that, if something like this were to actually happen.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Yeah, so I think that's a really because remember in the beginning I said, well, I'm not a billionaire, right? And why does it affect me? Why is it important for me? Well, people have to understand that what when something is done in one place or one part of the law, it becomes what's called a precedent. Precedent means it happened before, so we can do it again, right? So if you look at the actual net worth um of billionaires, not just in California, but across the whole US, I believe it's something like eight trillion dollars. I mean, that's a lot of money. However, when you're talking about the US government, I mean, we are I think 30 something trillion in debt, and I think we're adding two trillion a year um every single year. So even if you'd collected all the wealth of billionaires, it just wouldn't solve the problem that we have as a country. Now, if you look at the total net worth of all in the middle class, I believe that number is somewhere between, you know, one, I think it's like about 170 trillion. So what this could mean, the bottom line, is when they collect these taxes from building, first of all, I don't even know if it's gonna get approved, but if it does get approved, what's to stop the government from saying now I need everybody to participate? If you care about America, we're coming after you. What does that mean? Well, they're gonna take a look at your uh um your your home and how much equity you have. Okay, and you're gonna took take a look at your stocks, your 401k. Remember, a lot of this stuff you can't even touch it. So remember that. Your car, your you know, grandma's jewelry, you know, like I have gold coins that I got uh gifted from my my stepdad for my kids. Will everybody report everything? I don't know, but if you have a total of let's say 10 to 50,000 you have to pay or whatever it is, where's that money coming from? I mean, most Americans don't even have two thousand dollars saved in their bank account, right? I mean, that's that is a fact. So then you have to maybe borrow money to do this, to do that, and then what if you don't comply or listen? And then it's like you get flagged, maybe. Is there you know, I I mean we can go down the rabbit hole, but the people who are against us are really talking about okay, first of all, shouldn't happen because that's an illegal, you know, uh seizure of of of stuff that's not your the government is basically asking for a cut of your stuff, and if billionaires have to do that, well, who's next? It's probably the middle class. So I think it's something that I would never um there's other ways to increase revenue, right? Maybe you reduce tax breaks because there are a lot of wealthy people that know how to manage taxes and how to work around that. I mean, we do the same thing, so I'm not, you know, but maybe there's more taxes to be paid on capital gains or income or this or that. But just seizing things that aren't yours, I think that's a very dangerous and slippery slope.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

You know, listen, I I I love capitalism. I um it's the reason why you and I are in the position that we are today. It's the reason why you and I both have houses and we have a lot of real estate, and you know, we've we've worked really hard to get here, right? And um, and we should be rewarded as such. That concept is amazing. Um, and yet there are some bad sides to capitalism as well, where it's, you know, we're obviously seeing a wage, uh, a disparity between the rich and the poor. And yeah, you know, the billionaires only uh, you know, amount to, you know, a trillion or whatever, and then the middle class has a lot more. It's just, you know, even within the middle class, there's like the upper middle, and then there's there's obviously the low class and the lower middle. I think that that gap is constantly increasing. I think the problem is, is a lot of people are feeling it. It's tough. Um and it's just, I guess, sad to see that it's probably gonna continue to get worse, where there really isn't gonna be a middle class. You know, everyone talks about that. It's just gonna be the rich and then the poor. The rich are just gonna constantly get richer. You know, us people who have assets, we we know that our money is making more money. And then the poor who don't have assets and we're printing more money are naturally gonna get poorer and poor. And it's gonna be harder and harder. And it's gonna be kind of like a Korea situation or a lot of Asian countries where there's gonna be like very poor people that are around you. You're gonna see like the clear differences. We even see it within our friends. Like, you know, there's a clear difference between like what we have and what they have, and they they won't be able to climb out. Um, I mean, they can. It's just like there's gonna be a point where they won't be able to climb out. There's just gonna be a poor. Like most Koreans, they never think about having a home. You know, they just there, it's gonna be renting for the rest of my life. I'm gonna live, you know, in this certain means, and maybe I'll have a retirement. But so it's it's yeah, I think this whole thing, it's like um, it's like, yeah, you know, this is probably not the best fix where we're just taking the, you know, from the rich. But I feel I I the ideal world would be that we all, you know, can can uh it's kind of like the the the the America of the 1950s is like most people have homes, most people have the American dream. They're just working and they're they're all like fairly happy and content with what they have because it's like you know, the disparity was a lot a lot less uh back then, but then nowadays it's just like it's gonna get worse and worse and worse. I think it's gonna become like Asian, it's gonna get sad. So that's just my yeah, my final thought.

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Yeah, I guess I'll just end with this. The reason why, I mean, you know, we have we consult with a lot of people on why they should buy real estate, and one of the big, big, big, big, big reasons why is simply because of inflation. You know, we're already printing 40 billion a month, you know, starting in December. Uh, we're going into quantitative easing, just means printing more money, right? To make the economy um rev up again. But your money in in a savings bank is losing, you know, four percent a year, and you have to not get left behind by buying assets. It could just be like a piece of silver, even. I actually just talked to my stepdad about buying silver, you know, because silver is a material that's gonna be needed in a lot of computers and batteries, and you know. Anyway, I think the point is uh you have to be invested. Um, we always believe that a home is the best thing because you have to pay rent anyway. But I think it's something that people should just be aware of and uh save up money, and it's not about how much money you make, it's how much you save. Uh, do something, buy something, hold on to it, watch it grow. Give your kid a stock. You know what I mean? There's so many things you could do. Um, but yeah, that's that's all. And I think we should just watch what is going on. Great.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Well, thanks for watching, guys. Uh, again, we ask you guys to like and subscribe. Um, I know it's a little bit of a different format, but if you guys like it, please like, please comment, and uh we'll see you guys on the next video.