Jan 27, 2026
You wake up and look out your window. As you peer over the balcony of your multi-million-dollar Berkeley property, through the glittering rays of golden California sunlight, past the team of minimum-wage gardeners calmly pruning your hedges, your eyes bulge in horror as you see it:
A new sign proposing the redevelopment of a nearby teardown into a multi-unit housing complex.
Without hesitation you spring into action. Your NIMBY plate armor? Donned. Your plans to leave for your Cape Cod vacation home? Cancelled. A sternly worded letter to your local council demanding the crappy teardown be designated a “Berkeley landmark” to prevent new buildings? Penned.
Are you some standard California conservative proto-boomer? Or perhaps a cruel and jaded SV tech billionaire? No. You are former United States Labor Secretary, famed wealth inequality activist, and favorite Obama-era Oompa-Loompa Robert Reich. ‘Tis the summer of 2020, and all your progressive ideals have faded to ash in the face of BoomersBane: the potential construction of nearby affordable housing for people poorer than you.
I spoke with 21 billionaires about california’s unprecedented asset seizure ballot proposition. here: their plans to leave, their efforts to fight back, and the future of tech in california
it’s not a tax on “wealth,” the union’s ballot prop is designed to target the very concept of founder-controlled companies, and it will force the technology industry out of the state
as california braces for a "one-time" asset seizure, prop 30 is a cautionary tale