Who Designed Prop. 40? Meet the Academics Behind California’s Billionaire Tax Brawl
12th October 2026
Sacramento Bee, a Voice of the Crust.
Dave Regan, the hard-charging president of a healthcare union, wanted to raise $100 billion to address looming federal healthcare cuts. What about a one-time wealth tax on billionaires?
He doesn’t give a shit about health care, except insofar as it brings money to the members of his union. If he were the head of a pharmaceutical company, he’d be chased into the sea.
He’d come to the right group: a quartet of academics led by UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. The French economist was an academic star who has spent years studying inequality and taxation.
More than a year later, the tax is on the ballot as Proposition 40. Regan, never a household name, has become less visible in the campaign after accusations of workplace misconduct that he’s strenuously denied.
That’s left Saez and three other drafters of the tax — University of Missouri law professor David Gamage, UC Berkeley law professor Brian Galle and UC Davis law professor Darien Shanske — as some of Prop. 40’s loudest defenders, cramming debates and editorial board meetings in between classroom responsibilities.
Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, ya know.
Outspent more than 5-to-1 by billionaire-backed critics, Saez says Prop. 40’s best argument is its simplest: it’s time to tax the rich. Saez’s research found California billionaires’ wealth is 25 times what it was in 1982. On the left, billionaires are regularly invoked as oligarchic overlords whose wealth and influence have helped erode the foundations of democracy.
Yeah, because everybody else is tapped out, and the politicians have to find new pockets to pick. Nobody is so invincibly ignorant as a proglodyte who is sure and certain that he knows how to spend your money better than you do.
The debate has at times gotten personal. Earlier this year, Gamage said a critic created a website that included photos of the academics as well as their contact information and social media accounts, resulting in a deluge of angry messages. It was later taken down.
Proglodytes hate being treated the way they treat their opponents EVERY DAY.
“These billionaires are not going anywhere; they’re just going to a different state, and my concern is that they’re bringing with themselves a lot of the jobs that could have been in California,” Moretti said. “It just strengthens the economy of red states and weakens the economy of the most progressive blue state.”
Gee, who could have predicted that?