The “California Billionaire Tax Act”,
often referred to simply as the #billionaire #tax,
is a proposalthat would require any California resident worth more than $1bn to pay a
one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state.

It’s sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West,
and if it receives enough signatures from California voters, it will go to the ballot in November.

When the proposal was put forward at the end of last year,
many among tech’s billionaire elite threw a #tantrum.

Some opened offices or bought mansions in Florida or Texas,
vowing to leave California for good.
The fleeing rich included Palantir co-founder Peter #Thiel,
whose current net worth is $25bn;
Google co-founders Larry #Page and Sergey #Brin,
worth around $255bn and $240bn respectively;
and Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David #Sacks,
whose net worth is not publicly known.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta CEO
Mark #Zuckerberg,
worth $229bn, has also bought a property in south Florida valued between $150 and $200m.

Thiel has additionally led the charge in donating to a lobbying group, the "California Business Roundtable",
which has pledged to fight the wealth tax.

The Palantir co-founder handed over $3m to the political action committee in late December.
Other major donors include realtors, entrepreneurs and private equity firms.
James #Siminoff, who founded the camera-embedded Ring doorbell company, also donated $100,000, according to public records.

“The most powerful money in politics is to be on the no-side of a ballot measure,” said #McCuan.
“You can even pre-empt something getting to the ballot, like a billionaire’s tax,
by explaining to everyone out there that this is a bad idea for economic growth.”

Tech investors and venture capitalists have been extremely vocal in their opposition to the tax,
saying that the state will lose revenue as billionaires flee and it will hurt the state’s ability to be economically competitive.

Just this week, Chamath #Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive and current venture capital investor, wrote
“the loss of this tax revenue was totally avoidable but is now forever”.
#Balaji #Srinivasan, an investor and former chief technology officer of Coinbase, wrote,
“the most successful tech founders of all time have now exited the failed state of California”.

Adding on, Paul #Graham, the co-founder of seed capital firm Y Combinator, wrote:
“It’s important that people like Zuck and Larry Page are willing to move in response to the proposed wealth tax.
It shows politicians what will happen if they try things like this.”

Joining the billionaires, #Newsom has pledged to fight the tax, saying it will “drive a race to the bottom” and stifle innovation as the ultra-wealthy leave.
“This will be defeated – there’s no question in my mind,” Newsom told the New York Times in January.
“I’ll do what I have to do to protect the state.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/15/california-billionaires-state-elections

'Chatham House Rule'

Torenberg launched Chatham House the summer of 2024,
naming it after a British think tank that formalized the insight that
trusted conversations require a degree of privacy.

Two of its conservative participants said they see the group as a way to shift centrist Trump-curious figures to the Republican side,
but its founder said he’d begun it to have “a left-right exchange where we could have real conversations because of filter bubble group chats.”

Chatham House includes high-profile figures like the economist
#Larry #Summers and the historian #Niall #Ferguson,
and more partisan figures like #Shapiro and the Democratic analyst #David #Shor.

#Andreessen lurks.

But several participants described it to me as something like a gladiatorial arena with #Cuban most often in the center,
sparring with conservatives.

(“no idea what you are talking about :)” Cuban emailed in response to an inquiry about his arguments on Chatham House.)

The Group Chat Era depended on part of the American elite feeling shut out from public spaces,
and on the formation of a new conservative consensus.

Both of those are now fading
(though Torenberg has invested in a company called #ChatBCC that wants to commercialize the heady experience of sitting in on texts among the power elite).

Since Elon Musk turned X to the right
and an alternative media ecosystem emerged on Substack,
“a tremendous amount of the verboten conversations can now shift back into public view,” Andreessen told Fridman.

“It’s much healthier to live in a society in which people are literally not scared of what they’re saying.”

And Trump’s destabilizing “Liberation Day” has taken its toll on the coalition Andreessen helped shape.

You can see it on X,
where investors joke that they’ll put pronouns back in their bios in exchange for a return to the 2024 stock prices,
and where #Srinivasan has been a leading critic of Trump’s tariffs.

“Group chats have changed on the economy in the last few weeks,”
said #Rufo.
“There’s a big split on the tech right.”

The polarity of social media has also reversed,
and while participants used to keep their conservative ideas off social media,
“now the anti-Trump sentiment is what you’re afraid to say on X,” one said.

By mid-April, #Sacks had had enough with Chatham House:
“This group has become worthless since the loudest voices have TDS,”
he wrote, shorthanding
“Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Then he addressed Torenberg:
“You should create a new one with just smart people.”

Signal soon showed that three men had left the group:
The Sequoia partner #Shaun #Maguire,
the bitcoin billionaire #Tyler #Winklevoss, and #Tucker #Carlson.

https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america

The next morning,
wrecked,
I put on sweatpants and a hoodie
and tried to smuggle myself out of the hotel without having to talk to anyone.

I gave my chit to the valet and looked around to find Vance and Yarvin standing there waiting for cars.

“How do you guys feel?” Yarvin asked.

Vance was wearing a hoodie too and looked like I felt.
“I feel horrible,” he said.
“Not good.”

Yarvin asked what I’d thought of everything.

I said it would take a long time for me to figure that out.

We all shook hands,
and they waved as I got into my car and we all resumed our usual battle stations in the American info-wars.

#Kyle #Rittenhouse #Unabomber #Kaczynski #Dasha #Nekrasova #Thiel #Balaji #Srinivasan #Coinbase #Koch #Milo #Yiannopoulis #Steve #Bannon #NRx #RAGE #authoritarianism #monarchy #Yarvin #crypto #decentralized #internet #Lydia #Laurenson #BDSM #Mencius #Moldbug #Anton #Yarvin #Yarvin #Thielverse #Cruz #Josh #Hawley #Masters #Vance #Rod #Dreher #Walter #Kirn #worldview #dystopian #hell #Peter #Thiel #NatCon #Thielbucks #Vance #Blake #Masters #Thiel #Foundation #New #Right #Curtis #Yarvin #incels #Josh #Hammer #Michael #Anton #Chris #Arnade #Sohrab #Ahmari #Compact #libertine #left #libertarian #right #kook