They did a really good job on ads. Don’t look up how much they spent just on fooling the population.
Damn, americans are so brainwashed.
Workship capital and billionaires because hey, IT COULD YOU! You’re just about to make it, and once you do, of course it will all be 100% based on merit and fuck these poor people with a loser state of mind.
One might suggest, given Canadian elections in the last few years, that you exhibit a little more humility, because one can easily point out that Canadians are very stupid too, for staying home and not voting, allowing conservative parties to sweep their provinces.
It’s not just thinking about the billionaires.
It’s also not thinking about the suffering people whose healthcare was stolen for these billionaires and will not be restored. Their plight is far more important than billionaires crying about taxes.
- California nearly achieved universal healthcare. Now, millions are losing coverage
- Healthcare costs are surging. Taxing billionaires will help Californians keep their coverage
TBH I’m so sick of hearing about these rich scumbags. Capitalist media focusing on billionaires is the usual bullshit, privileged distraction.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_California_Proposition_40)
As tv ads continued to play, it affected how people thought about the proposition. Remember, people are really stupid and it’s really easy to change their opinions on things.
people are really stupid
Wrong. People are generally intelligent.
Propaganda is just very effective, even against intelligent people, and most people don’t have the extra time/energy or desire to investigate each prop. Which is a structural failure to not prioritize it, but that’s the point. There are systems in place to make political research feel both not important and also very exhausting. You live in a society full of very intelligent people, a slice of those intelligent people use their positions of power to add layers upon layers of friction to the political system so that they can retain their power.
You are not surrounded by idiots, but, you ARE ruled by criminals.
I guess to me, passing this seemed like a no-brainer and there isn’t any amount of propaganda that could sway me on that. How people are so confused about voting in their interests is surprising to me. But I think you have an interesting point.
That’s great, but just because you happen to be informed & engaged doesn’t mean the people that aren’t are stupid.
I’m in favor of a wealth tax as a corrective measure, which is how this prop was structured, but on as a broader recurring tax I am against it. If I was less informed on this prop or otherwise held a stronger “If it’s wrong to do it recurring then it’s wrong always” position, then I would have voted against it. It doesn’t take much effort to empathize with why people would be against new tax structures.
Might have something to do with this
https://edsource.org/updates/california-has-the-lowest-literacy-rate-of-any-state-data-suggests
The same state that voted to keep slavery 2 years ago? No way!
Wtf are you talking about?
Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.
Goes to show how gullible most of the population can be.
Perhaps I’ve been too harsh on the idea of re-education camps. We need to not just improve K-12 schooling, we need to expand adult schooling.
Reeducation camps are the humanitarian alternative.
I thought that was soylent
I think everyone should need to pass a basic intelligence quiz to be eligible to vote. Very strict guidelines on what questions are allowed to appear because I mean super basic info.
Like
1+3*3=? And circling the correct diagram of the water cycle. Very easy questions anybody with a 5th grade intelligence level could answer.
You seem to be under the misconception that the purpose of democracy is to select the objectively best governmental policy, as if such a thing could ever exist. That is not the purpose of democracy. If you want that kind of system, you want technocracy, not democracy.
The purpose of democracy is to keep us from killing each other. THAT is the purpose of democracy. It’s too give enough people enough of a voice in government that very few people think starting a civil war is a necessary and proper course of action. It has nothing to do with selecting the “best” governmental policy, as that’s entirely subjective.
The reason you don’t want filter voters based on intelligence is that stupid people can use firearms just fine.
You say this as if people wanting to kill each other is normal, and not mostly a result of class dynamics stemming from modes of production.
We have archaeological evidence of mass violence and war back when human beings were all living as classless egalitarian hunter gatherers. We’ve found mass graves that old.
Marxists lose the plot when they insist on analyzing everything through the lens of class struggle.
“stupid people can use firearms just fine.” that’s why you don’t want them aligned with power (see ICE). If they are not aligned with power, they are just domestic terrorists. And they are not that numerous. J6 showed how many of them is actually willing to show up for a fight. Not an unmanageable number. Definitely not enough to start a civil war back then. Now, with government backing, yes.
| stupid people can use firearms just fine
🙋🏼♂️
I think you should study your American history a little more before saying shit like this.
I’m aware of history, that’s not what I suggested.
How is what you suggested different?
I’m not suggesting it be administered by individuals who can discriminate for one. Also would want strict guidelines for what can be asked, I’m imagining a set of around 100 questions and you just get a random one on your ballot and there’s no leeway for states to edit the list. There are a plethora of other aspects that would need to be hammered out because there is absolutely room for fuckery, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Some states actually ran successful voter test programs prior to the idea being twisted by the South. Just because something’s been misused in the past doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the only potential outcome.
I would also prefer just educating people better so no test would even be necessary, but conservatives won’t fund education so we’re left with a bunch of dummies just voting for anything that says their political affiliation next to it.
Some states actually ran successful voter test programs
Really? Which ones?
I couldn’t find any with my internet sleuthing skills. Just a bunch of stuff about voter suppression.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=have+there+ever+been+studies+about+voting+tests&ia=web
I believe that any test, even if done in good faith initially, will inevitably lead to voter suppression against some minority group.
“Literacy tests did not begin as a racist tool. Connecticut adopted the first literacy requirement for voting in 1855 as part of its new state constitution, with the stated goal of preventing voter fraud and ensuring voters could understand ballot questions. Massachusetts, Maine, and several other Northern states followed with similar requirements in the decades that followed.”
https://www.cuip.org/what-were-literacy-tests-for-voting/
A test will inherently disenfranchise a group, that’s the point though; disenfranchise the least intelligent and easiest to manipulate across the population. Like I said, I’d rather we just educated people better and they weren’t so easily manipulated but how do you deal with existing adults who will never be able to meaningfully detect bias and propaganda? I don’t think there’s a correct answer.
I’m dismayed so many fell for the propaganda on this and the slimy gov opposed it, gross.
I am thinking of the billionaires. I’m thinking about inflicting medieval torture devices upon them,
inspiration for those who don’t know: https://history.howstuffworks.com/10-medieval-torture-devices.htm
I’ll settle for taxation and wealth redistribution.
It could be fun to make it a coin flip that each billionaire has to call in the air. If they call it right, they get to pick.
So it failed?
Vote count is not complete, but it appears likely to fail; it’s currently 45% yes, 55% no. https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures
Imagine not being a billionaire and voting to not tax them.
Humans are real dumb. I’m honestly shocked we aren’t still throwing feces at each other while arguing who gets the best spot in the cave.
The really frustrating part is that many Californians also voted to increase sales taxes again. Sales taxes are incredibly regressive.
Lots of comments in all the blue tsunami posts talking about how the public must finally “get it”. They now think like rational humans who will choose what’s best for a society and in their own best interest.
At best this is reactionary revenge voting meant to punish the ruling party for the ways policies have impacted them recently. I think the next election we’ll be right back to a split government with no power to undo any of the techbro billionaire fascist ratcheting that has happened the last decade.
Kinda funny to take the electorate behaving the way they’ve always behaved as evidence of something unprecedented happening.
Gas, its about gas.
They ran so many ads. I was visiting family in CA a few weeks ago and every second commercial was saying if the law passes they’ll use it to put a tax on everyone. Obviously bullshit but I can understand why some lower half of the bell curve people would believe it.
I was visiting family in CA a few weeks ago and every second commercial was saying if the law passes they’ll use it to put a tax on everyone. Obviously bullshit but I can understand why some lower half of the bell curve people would believe it.
Honestly that is a very fair point. Federal income tax was initially passed as a wartime measure and only applied to the wealthiest people. Over time inflation and necessity lowered the threshold lower and lower until everyone had to file income tax.
I’m in favor of wealth taxes on billionaires, but you have to admit, it does establish a dangerous precedent. Someone with a few million in a 401k is fantastically wealthy by the standards of someone working paycheck to paycheck for minimum wage. Why wouldn’t they support a wealth tax on people’s 401k balances?
The slippery slope fallacy here does not apply. We have clear historical examples of taxes that were originally meant to only apply to the rich growing in scope until they were applied to the whole population. It’s actually a pretty likely outcome if wealth taxes became more common. Every other tax expanded to encompass the entire population, why not wealth taxes?
Income taxes were added to the constitution in 1913 and weren’t limited to only the most wealthy people.
In inflation adjusted dollars, the tax applied a 1% income tax to incomes over $100k and a 7% tax to incomes over $16 million. Yes, it was originally intended only for the wealthy. The upper middle class paid a tiny nominal 1%. The only people paying any substantial income tax were the extremely wealthy.
I get it. You want to tax the rich, so do I. But you’re letting that desire cloud your judgment and reason.
The slippery slope fallacy here does not apply.
It is absolutely a fallacy to say we can’t possibly levy a tax on a billionaire lest it, ultimately becomes a tax on us.
Already they have a pretty sweet deal compared to most folks, most folks have most of their ‘wealth’ taxed as property. Since real property is a tiny sliver of their ‘wealth’, they get to keep more percentage wise than the random person, despite needing it less.
To say any tax might evolve into a tax on the common man is like saying we can’t regulate nuclear weapons, lest it becomes a regulation preventing people from having scissors. Yes, there is the example of income tax and a mistake was made at the time they went to expand it. The problem was not the initial tax, it was the point of expansion. There’s no reason the expansion of the tax should have any lower barrier than getting it levied in the first place.
Now if you argue that the measure was somehow flawed in that it failed to limit the scope and explicitly opened the door to things, but it was the opposite, a one-time, billionaire only scoped event.
Not taking them is a worse precedent. Every year their wealth grows.
Wealth taxes kinda already have been applied to the entire population, except the ultra rich. You pay property taxes, and those definitely go up based on unrealized gains.
Nothing stopping us from voting people in who will raise income tax brackets so only the top 10% pays them.
Nothing but us and our lack of imagination. We can do the same with wealth taxes and the 1%.
Or we can surrender in advance and allow them to continue our March to poverty.
arent we though? cyclosporidia and gentrification?
Ah fuck, this is how I find out?
Must not have even been close if it’s already decided, we take forever for this typically.
Oh well. Fuck em, I want a national, if not international solution anyway. If Blue Texas is any reminder, there is no war but class war and Californian Corporate Dems aren’t an ally on that. If anything, we need a national movement of pissed off poor folk to lead the charge on this.
It wasn’t close at all. I could tell it had failed not long after polls closed from the results.
Sad. Though, I’m not with the others willing to just blame ads nor “taxes = bad” folk… there’s just too many people who are the Gavin Newsom type. I’m honestly not at all surprised, every state is technically purple, including ours.
At least everyone I’ve met today has been so positive and happy, it’s a real change from the Los Angeles I’m used to.
Also Angeleno, that’s been my perception as well. In general it was a good election and we’re better off than before.
The two closest results are also the two most confusingly worded measures on the ballot.
