对于科技行业的许多人来说，中期选举就像一场持续了两年的狂欢之后的宿醉。在清醒的白昼里，他们对“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）的示好以及铺张的开销现在看来或许有些尴尬。然而对于硅谷的亿万富翁阶层来说，选举过后依然有理由让香槟继续流淌——因为富有依然有利可图。加州选民似乎否决了40号提案，这是一项具有里程碑意义的动议，旨在对该州的亿万富翁征收一次性5%的税。
For many in the tech industry, the midterms landed like a hangover after a two-year bender. In the sober light of day, their flirtations with MAGA and extravagant spending may now seem embarrassing. Yet for Silicon Valley's billionaire class, there's still reason to keep the champagne flowing after the election — because it still pays to be rich. California voters appear to have rejected prop 40, a landmark initiative to impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires in the state.
他们似乎也倾向于一项对等措施即42号提案，该提案将束缚任何未来对金融资产征税的尝试——正是这类资产将富人与真正的超级富豪区分开来。（两项提案的选票仍在统计中。）在一个拥有全美最高财富不平等、且最进步的州里，在近代史上最偏向民主党的全国选举中做出这样的决定，取决于你问的是谁，这要么是民粹主义的失败，要么是自由企业的胜利。
They also seem to favor a countermeasure, prop 42, that would hamstring any future attempts to tax financial assets —the kind that separate the rich from the really rich. (Votes for both measures are still being tallied.) That people in the most progressive state with the highest wealth inequality in the country made such decisions in the bluest national election in recent history is either a failure of populism, or a victory of free enterprise, depending on who you ask.
在X平台上，彼得·蒂尔旗下“创始人基金”的迈克·索拉纳简明扼要地宣告了40号提案的明显败北：“吃屎吧，共产主义者。”加州居住着200多名亿万富翁。加州大学伯克利分校经济学家加布里埃尔·祖克曼指出，他们累计拥有约2.3万亿美元的财富，这一总额大致相当于该州所有居民的年度总收入之和。不久之后，可能会出现数十位这样的富豪，因为像安赛乐和OpenAI这样的公司正准备进行具有世界历史意义的首次公开募股。
On X, Mike Solana of Peter Thiel's Founders Fund heralded Prop 40's apparent defeat succinctly: "Eat shit, communists." More than 200 billionaires live in California. Cumulatively, they hold an estimated $2.3 trillion in wealth, a sum that UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman notes is roughly equivalent to the combined annual income of every single resident in the state. Soon, there could be dozens more, as companies like Anthropic and OpenAI prepare world-historic IPOs. (Anthropic's alone could mint close to a thousand centimillionaires.)
（仅安赛乐一家就能造就近千名拥有数亿美元身家的超级富豪。）对这些人来说，财富不是薪水问题，而是资产问题。科技行业的多数财富仍留在公司股权中，在股票售出之前是不征税的。这使得该州一些最富有的人得以避免缴纳高额所得税：马克·扎克伯格、拉里·埃里森和拉里·佩奇等亿万富翁都以拿1美元的象征性年薪而闻名。
Wealth for these people is not a matter of salary, but of assets. Most fortunes in the tech industry remain in company equity, which is untaxed until shares are sold. That has allowed some of the richest people in the state to avoid paying much in income tax: Billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Larry Page all famously take $1 salaries.
“这个系统的运作方式是，他们实际上可以在不交税的情况下创造出巨额财富，”投资者、前加州长官候选人、也是少数几个公开支持对亿万富翁征税的亿万富翁之一汤姆·施泰尔表示，“我们知道我们需要走向何方，那就是一个更公平的税收系统。”40号提案提供了一种这样的替代方案。支持者辩称，这将标志着一项迟到的纠正，并且依然允许亿万富翁保持非常非常富有的状态。
"The way this system works is they can literally create gigantic fortunes without paying tax," says Tom Steyer, an investor and former gubernatorial candidate, and one of the few billionaires to come out in support of the billionaire tax. "We know where we need to go, which is a fairer tax system." Prop 40 offered one such alternative. Supporters argued that it would mark a long overdue correction, and still allow billionaires to remain very, very rich.
“加州最穷的亿万富翁今年也将赚到约3亿美元。如果我们通过加州财富税，他将只赚2.35亿美元，”前Stripe工程师兼政治顾问赛卡特·查克拉巴蒂在X平台上写道。
"The poorest billionaire in California will make about $300 million this year. If we pass the CA wealth tax, he will only make $235 million," Saikat Chakrabarti, a former Stripe engineer and political adviser, wrote on X. Critics argued that asking billionaires to pay cash on their paper wealth would ruin the tech economy, forcing them to sell off parts of private companies, and inspiring an exodus from the state.
批评者辩称，要求亿万富翁用现金支付纸面财富将摧毁科技经济，迫使他们抛售部分私营公司的股份，并引发从该州的出走。今年早些时候，投资者巴拉吉·斯里尼瓦桑在X平台上指出，拉里·佩奇、谢尔盖·布林、埃隆·马斯克和彼得·蒂尔已经“离开了失败的加州”，Y Combinator首席执行官加里·陈则警告称，如果财富税通过，许多初创公司创始人将选择根本不来加州。
Earlier this year, the investor Balaji Srinivasan noted on X that Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel had already "exited the failed state of California," and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan warned that should a billionaire tax pass, many startup founders would choose not to come to California at all.
财富税的潜在受害者们对这些结果感到足够担忧，以至于组建了一个联盟，其中包含了科技界的知名人士——布林、帕特里克·科利森、埃里克·施密特和约翰·多尔都在其中。他们总共花费了超过3亿美元来击败这项动议（据报道其中包括1.48亿美元的广告宣传活动），这是单项投票动议中单方花费的历史最高纪录。相比之下，支持者在广告上花费了约200万美元。
The would-be victims of the billionaire tax feared those outcomes enough to form a coalition, which included prominent names in tech — Brin, Patrick Collison, Eric Schmidt, and John Doerr among them. Together, they spent more than $300 million to defeat the measure (including a reported $148 million ad campaign), the most ever spent by one side on a single ballot initiative. Supporters, by comparison, spent about $2 million on ads.
“这件事上的资金悬殊太大了，”硅谷政治战略家库珀·特博说，“存在着真正的营销差距。”
"The disparity in money in this thing was too high," says Cooper Teboe, a political strategist in Silicon Valley. "There was a genuine marketing gap."
金钱并非万能。在得克萨斯州，有时身家万亿的埃隆·马斯克曾花费近5亿美元试图让共和党人保持权力，但选民却扭转方向，自1991年以来首次选出了一位民主党州长，并选出了一位将控制数据中心作为其核心信息的民主党参议员。这两场竞选都以“顶层对底层”而非“左翼对右翼”的政治理念为蓝本——也就是说，首先在阶级利益上达成一致。
Money isn't everything. In Texas, where sometimes trillionaire Elon Musk spent nearly $500 million trying to keep Republicans in office, voters turned around and elected a Democratic governor for the first time since 1991, and a Democratic Senator who made reigning in data centers a major part of his message. Both of those campaigns were modeled on the idea of a "top versus bottom" rather than "left versus right" politics — that is, an alignment over class interests above all else.
来自40号提案双方的热切关注——以及尽管许多人认为存在重大缺陷，仍有约46%的加州选民赞成征税这一事实——表明关于财富税的讨论才刚刚开始。根据去年的一项全国民意调查，大多数美国人认为亿万富翁纳税不够；一项研究发现，73%的美国人会赞成对亿万富翁征收“特别附加税”。今年4月份，皮尤研究中心的一项民调发现，60%的人认为企业和超级富豪在税收方面没有支付“他们应尽的份额”。
The zealous interest from both sides of prop 40 — and the fact that some 46% of voters in California favored the tax despite what many saw as significant flaws — are signs that conversations about wealth taxation are just getting started. Most Americans think billionaires don't pay enough in taxes, according to a national survey from last year; one study found that 73% of Americans would favor a "special additional tax on billionaires." In April, a Pew survey found that 60% of people believed that corporations and very wealthy people did not pay "their fair share" in taxes.
这促使一些财富税的支持者将目光转向全国层面。事实上，40号提案的一些反对者（包括加州州长加文·纽森）提出，他们宁愿在联邦层面而不是州层面征收财富税。其他对40号提案细节（比如其实际财政影响会是什么、州政府将如何评估财富，以及所有这些假设的资金究竟会流向何处）有异议的反对者，也纷纷公开表示普遍支持财富税。
That's led some proponents of a wealth tax to shift their gaze nationally. Indeed, some of prop 40's detractors, including Governor Gavin Newsom, made the argument that they would rather tax wealth federally than on the state level. Other opponents, who had grievances with the details of prop 40 — like what its actual fiscal impact would be, how the state would assess wealth, and where all of that hypothetical money would actually go — have come out in support of wealth taxes in general.
支持对亿万富翁征收联邦税的施泰尔表示，如果40号提案“不是剥皮的方法，别回来告诉我没有剥皮的方法”。拥有对超级富豪征税的计划“几乎成了任何最终成为2028年主流候选人的先决条件，”特博说，“战争仍在继续。”
Steyer, who supports the idea of a federal tax on billionaires, says that if prop 40 is "not the way to skin the cat, don't come back and tell me there's no way to skin the cat." Having a plan for taxing the ultra rich "becomes almost a prerequisite for whoever ends up as the dominant 2028 candidate," says Teboe. "The war continues."