Wall Street Journal Spotlights Professor Shanske, Fellow Architects of Billionaire Tax

On Oct. 29, the Wall Street Journal profiled “The Four Academics Who Dreamed Up California’s Wealth Tax,” including Professor Darien Shanske.

Shanske drafted Proposition 40, the Billionaire Tax Act, with UC Berkeley economics Professor Emmanuel Saez and law Professor Brian Galle and University of Missouri law Professor David Gamage. 

As the story notes, “The academics behind the measure have quietly become the go-to brain trust for Democratic lawmakers and state activists, but they have garnered criticism elsewhere.”

Proposition 40 has faced a blitz of TV and online ads from the billionaire-led political action committee Building a Better California, which has spent a reported $300 million fighting Proposition 40. The group created the counterinitiatives Prop. 41 and 42.

Heavily outmatched financially, the academics have written articles and given interviews in response to the billionaires’ assertions. 

“But also, if we did have a commercial, it would maybe just say 'go read the facts for yourselves,' ” Shanske told the Journal. 

The New Yorker, New York Times and Sacramento Bee also ran expansive pieces about Proposition 40’s drafters.

Read more about Shanske’s wealth tax efforts in this UC Davis School of Law story.

Darien Shanske is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis. His academic interests include taxation, particularly state and local taxation, local government law, public finance, and political theory, particularly jurisprudence