A march supporting California’s billionaires did not draw a huge crowd on Saturday. The San Francisco Chronicle counted around three dozen attendees, along with another dozen tongue-in-cheek counter-protesters. To be fair, organizer Derik Kauffman had predicted attendance of only a few dozen beforehand.
The “March for Billionaires” has drawn outsized attention on social media because it is such an incongruous idea. According to Mission Local, journalists nearly outnumbered demonstrators at the event itself. Marchers carried signs with messages like “We love you Jeffrey Bezos” and “It’s very difficult to write a nuanced argument on a sign.”
The ostensible reason for the demonstration was to protest the Billionaire Tax Act. This proposed state ballot measure would require Californians worth more than one billion dollars to pay a one-time, five percent tax on their total wealth. If the measure actually passes, Governor Gavin Newsom has said he will veto it.
Kauffman, who founded the AI startup RunRL and is not a billionaire himself, told reporters that California is, he believes, the only state to give health insurance to people who come into the country illegally. He stated that he thinks the state probably should not be providing that. Fourteen states offer health care to undocumented immigrants.