California: voters bury the tax on the 250 largest fortunes

According to Reporterre, Californians rejected "Proposition 40" on 3 November. The measure would have levied 5% on the worldwide wealth of the state's 250 largest fortunes to raise $100 billion for public hospitals. According to the first tallies from the Secretary of State's office, with 50% of ballots counted, the "no" side led with 56.41% against 43.59% for "yes". The text drew on the work of the economist Gabriel Zucman. The summary we have stops there: we still do not know the final result, the turnout, how the campaigns were financed, or the exact arguments on both sides. What follows is therefore our reading, not an established fact.

First observation: the vote pits 250 individuals against the public hospital. On one side, a handful of fortunes; on the other, a service that almost everyone depends on. That millions of voters ended up protecting these 250 fortunes deserves at least an inquiry: who paid for the adverts, which narratives dominated, and how much of the "no" came from voters who feared the tax might one day apply to them? The dispatch does not say. Nor do we claim it does.

Second observation, more structural. A wealth tax hits accumulated capital, not current income. Yet that capital is, for the most part, past surplus value: unpaid labour, turned into shares, company stakes and property. Hospitals, by contrast, run on the work of carers, paid at the cost of reproducing their labour power, no more. To propose that the first should finance the second is to propose that a share of this surplus return to the community that made it possible. It is little wonder that the holders concerned do not see this as an accounting given.

Third point: the vocabulary. In commentary on this kind of vote, one reads quickly that "markets fear" or that "capital flight looms", as though capital were the weather. This is the fetishism of the commodity in its purest form: behind the "flight" lie the decisions of specific people, with tax lawyers and means of pressure. That this threat weighed on the campaign remains our hypothesis; it is nonetheless common in these debates, and it will need checking whether it did so here.

Finally, a nuance that matters: only 50% of ballots had been counted. The gap may still move, although a 13-point deficit is rarely made up. And a rejection at the ballot box does not settle the underlying question. Funding public health remains, and it will be paid for one way or another: through taxes on those who own, or by others, through debt, consumption or the decline of services. Marx noted that capital knows how to shift its overheads onto the working class and the petty bourgeoisie. Will California's hospitals prove him right? The state's next budgets will tell.