Mark Cuban and I Disagree on the Billionaire Tax.

From The Washington Posts’s Letters to the Editor.

In November, Californians will vote on a one-time 5 percent tax on the state’s roughly 250 billionaires. I debated Mark Cuban last week on the proposal.

California’s billionaires are worth more than $2 trillion, which is half of California’s total gross domestic product. They would still be worth nearly $2 trillion after this tax, and the revenue gained would help poor kids in California receive health care.

Sixty-one percent of California billionaires’ wealth sits in publicly traded stock that is liquid. For the start-up founder who is a billionaire on paper but is cash poor, the proposal includes a deferral. They would owe nothing to the government until they take value out through a secondary sale, a distribution or an initial public offering.

I’m not concerned about billionaires fleeing the state, either. During a fireside chat at Stanford, Jensen Huang told me that the billionaire tax is fine with him and urged his peers not to leave the state.

The artificial intelligence revolution is happening in my district: Eighty percent of the nation’s venture capital dollars so far this year came to California. I want a free enterprise system in which every hardworking American has enough money to live a decent life. Those who have made billions of dollars through pluck and ingenuity can afford to give back to a state that allowed them to live their dreams. That is progressive, patriotic capitalism.

Like Olivia Pope in “Scandal,” I don’t understand the kinds of people “who have everything but still want more.”

One more thing.

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