Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) board member and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who is also a former resident of California, has warned that the state risks becoming a socialist system like the Soviet Union, as he escalates a $57 million campaign against the proposed billionaire tax.
From Soviet Refugee To Billionaire Combatant
“I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union,” Brin said in a rare statement to The New York Times. “I don’t want California to end up in the same place.”
Once a Democratic donor who backed former President Barack Obama, Brin relocated to Nevada before the Dec. 31 deadline to avoid the proposed tax, following fellow Google co-founder Larry Page, who also left California ahead of the same deadline.
He has since personally contributed $57 million to Building a Better California, a nonprofit targeting “any and all new taxes on personal property,” directly countering a proposed one-time 5% billionaire wealth tax on assets exceeding $1 billion.
Brin also donated nearly $500,000 to the Republican National Committee and $40,000 to Trump-endorsed GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, making him California’s second-largest individual donor this cycle, according to The New York Times.
What’s At Stake
On Monday, the proposed tax, aimed at raising $100 billion largely to offset federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, is now headed to the November ballot after SEIU Healthcare Workers West claimed over 1.5 million signatures, well above the roughly 875,000 required.
The proposed bill has sharply divided prominent figures. Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, Palantir (NASDAQ:PLTR) chairman Peter Thiel and Y Combinator‘s Garry Tan have repeatedly criticized the proposal.
Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz warned it is the best strategy he has seen to dismantle Silicon Valley’s network effect, drawing a parallel to Norway’s entrepreneur exodus under a similar unrealized gains tax. Meta (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, purchased a Miami estate estimated at $150 million to $200 million in February.
On the other side, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) headlined a campaign for the measure in February, calling out Brin, Zuckerberg and others by name and demanding they pay their fair share. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, however, said in a January interview that he is “perfectly fine” with the tax and later, in April, urged people to move to California.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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