LA socialists are plotting yet one more wealth tax, aiming this time at “overpaid CEOs” — and needling favourite goal Elon Musk by holding their launch social gathering outdoors his Tesla Diner.
Members of the lodge unions that helped muscle via Los Angeles’ controversial $30-an-hour wage stood outdoors Musk’s eatery in Hollywood on Wednesday and started amassing signatures for a brand new poll measure they’re calling the “Overpaid CEO Tax.”
The initiative — backed by the Democratic Socialists-tied Unite Right here Native 11 and a slate of allied unions — targets corporations with a minimum of 1,000 workers if their prime govt earns greater than 50 occasions the median employee’s pay in Los Angeles.
The penalty for the focused CEOs is an added metropolis enterprise tax value one to 10 occasions the present fee, which now runs between roughly 0.1% and 0.425% of gross receipts.
“A rising and harmful divide is tearing Los Angeles aside,” Unite Right here Native 11 co-President Kurt Petersen stated in an announcement — blasting CEOs for raking in large bucks whereas their staff “juggle two and three jobs” and wrestle to afford hire and well being care.
The proposal, if accepted by voters, would generate about $500 million a 12 months, with the dough directed towards offering extra low-income housing, sidewalk repairs and different metropolis initiatives, backers stated.
However native enterprise leaders advised The Submit that the proposal is one other step down a well-recognized — and dangerous — fiscal path for the town.
“When that income stream falters, the reflexive response is all the time the identical: tax companies once more,” stated George Francisco, co-chair of the LA BizFed Accountable Governance Committee and board chair of the Westside Council of Chambers of Commerce.
“That strategy hasn’t fastened fiscal mismanagement or corruption, and it hasn’t delivered the companies residents are paying for.”
He stated Los Angeles particularly and California usually already depend on what he referred to as an “inverted pyramid” tax system — the place a small variety of excessive earners and huge employers bankroll the majority of public companies.
He likened the proposed CEO tax to efforts aimed toward billionaires within the state, arguing such ways have did not stabilize California’s funds prior to now, since they’ve led to funding and jobs shifting to financially friendlier states.
Musk himself pulled Tesla and SpaceX out of California and moved them to Texas in 2024.
“To anybody who’s been watching lengthy sufficient, that is how a billionaire tax turns into a millionaire tax … then a tax on everybody else,” Francisco stated of the left’s newest proposed wealth assault. “The hits simply preserve coming.”
Unite Right here Native 11 has been a key backer of Democratic Socialists of America–aligned metropolis council members, together with Eunisses Hernandez (CD1) and Hugo Soto-Martínez (CD13), each elected on aggressive labor platforms with heavy union help.
Those self same forces helped drive the Metropolis Council’s 2023 vote to elevate the minimal wage for lodge and airport staff to $30 an hour by 2028 — a transfer unions branded an “Olympic wage” forward of the 2028 Video games.
To the north, San Francisco voters accepted the same CEO tax final 12 months, imposing a surcharge on corporations whose prime executives earn vastly greater than their staff — a transfer that has additionally sparked warnings from enterprise leaders there about diminished hiring and funding.
To qualify for the November poll, backers in Los Angeles have 120 days to gather roughly 140,000 legitimate signatures from registered metropolis voters.
