To the editor: President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will save the wealthiest Americans more than $1 trillion in taxes over the next decade. This enormous tax cut will be paid for, in large part, by cutting funds for programs and services most of us have considered essential for the health and wellbeing of our population, especially healthcare. To keep open clinics and emergency rooms around the state, a proposal for a one-time 5% tax on billionaires will be on the ballot in November.
I received a mailer encouraging me to sign a petition to have a counter-measure placed on the ballot. As documented by the Los Angeles Times, this is a poison pill designed to derail the tax bill that would fund healthcare affected by the federal cuts (“Poison-pill effort to cancel proposed billionaire tax hits voters’ mailboxes,” March 10). This is a desperate ploy by the richest citizens in our state to retain every penny gifted to them by the Trump administration.
Their contribution to our state’s healthcare would not affect their lifestyle. They will still have more money than they could possibly spend. This avaricious population would see people suffer to gain more riches than they need.
Paul Ali, Sunland
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To the editor: Maybe the best solution is to let the billionaires run away with their wealth.
But, the state should then have the right to seize all their California-based assets, most particularly land, housing, vehicles etc. — things that can be sold by the state. Get liens on everything real quick.
Timothy Bond, San Diego
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To the editor: Every society generates a certain amount of wealth. Who should benefit from that wealth? Once you answer that question, most other questions answer themselves.
I believe the majority of our wealth should go to the majority of people, those who did the actual work to generate it. Our particular form of capitalism — evolving, as it did, out of feudalism — has resulted in a system that relentlessly funnels our wealth into the pockets of a very, very small group of people at the top of the economic pyramid.
Now those wealthiest-of-all people are trying to put a proposition on the ballot that will protect their fortunes from a tax intended to aid the neediest among us with healthcare. Mind you, if the uber-rich did in fact have to pay a one-time 5% tax on their assets, they would still be rich, they would still have more money than they could spend in a lifetime. But, apparently, that isn’t enough.
It occurs to me, as it has occurred to others, that the entire issue could be resolved by simply ending Trump’s $1 billion-a-day war. But that’s a whole other letter to the editor.
Bart Braverman, Indio
