Let me congratulate the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and other trade unions for gathering the signatures necessary to put a 5% billionaires’ wealth tax on the California ballot this November.

At a time of massive and growing income and wealth inequality, this initiative is needed now more than ever. If passed, it would raise $100 billion from just 200 billionaires in California who together are worth more than $2 trillion. That revenue would prevent millions of low-income and working-class Californians from losing healthcare and nutrition assistance because of President Donald Trump’s disastrous “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Here’s the simple truth. In California and across the country, while working families struggle to survive, the billionaire class has never had it so good.

Last year, the five wealthiest people in California alone became $300 billion richer. Nationally, after receiving one of the largest tax breaks in modern history, 938 billionaires increased their wealth by $1.5 trillion. Incredibly, the richest man alive, Elon Musk, now owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of U.S households.

This extreme inequality is not an aberration. Over the past six years, U.S. billionaires more than doubled their wealth, gaining over $4.6 trillion. In fact, since 1975, nearly $80 trillion has been redistributed from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

While the very rich get much richer, more than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Nearly half of older workers have nothing saved for retirement. More than 20% of seniors in America are trying to survive on less than $15,000 a year. In California, the child poverty rate has nearly tripled in just five years to almost 19%.

Despite enormous gains in productivity and technology, the average American worker is making $28 a week less today than they did 53 years ago, adjusting for inflation.

Bottom line: As a nation, this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality is an issue that we can no longer ignore and that we must confront.

Now, it should surprise no one that, while poll after poll shows strong public support for this initiative, the billionaire class is working overtime to defeat it.

I understand why Mark Zuckerberg, worth $237 billion, would rather spend $100 million on his third yacht than pay more in taxes. I understand why Larry Ellison, worth $218 billion, would rather spend $500 million on a private island in Hawaii than worry about the plight of working families.

But here’s what I don’t understand. Why are the opponents of this initiative unwilling to honestly debate this issue? Why are they unwilling to discuss the morality of their position?

I would love to hear from opponents like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel and the other billionaires as to why they think it is more important for them not to pay their fair share of taxes while hospitals close, children go hungry and cancer patients get evicted because they cannot afford expensive treatment.

Instead of addressing that question, billionaires are threatening to punish the people of California. They claim that if voters pass a modest tax on billionaires, they will leave the state and take their businesses with them. Let’s be clear: That is extortion.

What these billionaires are really saying is that democracy does not apply to them — that if the majority act in their own interests, billionaires will retaliate.

But here is the good news: The American people are catching on.

They are tired of billionaires paying a lower tax rate than the average worker while they struggle with the soaring costs of healthcare, food, housing, gas and prescription drugs.

They are tired of corporations like Disney, Tesla, Palantir and Ticketmaster making billions in profits and paying nothing in federal income taxes while more than 60,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford to see a doctor.

They are tired of billionaires like Brin spending $57 million to defeat this tax on billionaires while his wealth has grown by more than $120 billion since Trump was elected.

Across the country, people are sick and tired of the greed and arrogance of the billionaire class. They are demanding an economy that works for all.

That’s why I introduced legislation to establish a 5% annual wealth tax on the 938 billionaires in America who collectively are worth more than $8.2 trillion and represent just 0.000003% of our population. Over a decade, this bill would raise $4.4 trillion.

If this legislation were to pass, in its first year, it would provide every man, woman and child in a household making $150,000 or less with a $3,000 direct payment — that’s $12,000 for a family of four.

It would tackle the housing crisis by providing the resources necessary to build 7 million units of low-income and affordable homes and apartments.

It would expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing.

It would guarantee universal childcare.

It would strengthen public education by ensuring no teacher earns less than $60,000 a year.

It would expand home healthcare so seniors and people with disabilities can live with dignity in their own homes.

And it would restore healthcare to the 15 million Americans who are losing it under Trump.

All of this would be paid for by a 5% annual tax on the wealth of billionaires.

Nobody worth less than $1 billion would pay a penny more in taxes.

My critics claim that this legislation is “punitive” and “confiscatory.” Really?

If this bill was in effect this year, Elon Musk would pay $39 billion more in taxes, leaving him with “just” $737 billion to survive.

Jeff Bezos also would owe about $14 billion more in taxes and would still have $265 billion to put a roof over his head.

Meanwhile, life would dramatically improve for hundreds of millions of Americans, and the richest people in this country would barely notice a dent in their net worth.

Nearly a century ago, Justice Louis Brandeis said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, but we cannot have both.”

What he said was true in 1933. It is even more accurate today. In the year 2026, let us choose democracy over oligarchy. Let us demand that billionaires pay their fair share of taxes. And let us build a society that works for the many, not the few.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate.

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