I never thought I would live in California. I grew up in Colorado, went to college in Boston, and lived in Texas. I came here for business school because I wanted to go to Stanford – and because we could play golf in the winter.
Now I love this place. This has nothing to do with taxes; taxes have never been on our list of criteria when choosing a place to live. I want to live where my family is and I love the weather, job market and dynamics of this region.
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There are examples all over the world of the power of effective government, and like anything else, government also needs to be funded. We should make it effective and efficient.
I'm proud to pay the taxes I do. I should pay more taxes than others because I have more wealth – that makes sense.
My wife and I have achieved financial success in our careers
Much of our financial success was due to my wife's success, as well as mine at the beginning of our careers.
I went to Harvard, worked at McKinsey for three years, and then went to Stanford. Then I worked at Hewlett-Packard for almost eight years.
In 2007, my wife was a vice president at Yahoo and we had two young children. I looked at my boss's job and my CEO job and decided I would never want to be in those roles. I thought, “Oh, I'm climbing this ladder, but it's not quite what I want.”
Ultimately, my wife and I decided that I would step back and become a stay-at-home parent. My wife continued her career and achieved great success in the Internet industry – at Yahoo, Google and Pinterest.
During my studies, I became interested in social issues
I studied poverty, American cities, housing, transportation, sociology, and began to wonder about questions like: “what does justice look like?”; “what does honesty look like?”; “What would building a great society look like?”
I was busy building my career, meeting my wife, and raising my children, but over time, as we progressed professionally, I returned to thinking about how we help those around us. I did a lot of volunteer work in a variety of settings, eventually becoming the director of operations and then director of strategy for the nonprofit New Teacher Center, which runs intensive mentoring programs for new teachers.
Since 2012, I have founded and led several education-related nonprofit organizations and advised nearly 200 people and institutions on issues such as strategy, finance, operations and organizational culture.
I also focus a lot on the problem of excessive wealth and its impact on society and on the vision for the future of American democracy – that's how I came to Patriotic Millionairesan organization of wealthy Americans who advocate for higher taxes on people like us, a higher minimum wage, and a greater sharing of political power in our society.
See also: You don't have to earn a lot to be middle class. We counted it [KWOTY]
I was struck by the enormous concentration of wealth
In recent years, I have been struck by the massive accumulation of wealth enabled by the consumer internet, globalization, and the structure of the financial industry. It's completely different from the 80s and 90s; it's a whole new game.
Lately, as I look around Silicon Valley and see all these people who are incredibly rich, talented and successful, I realized how few of them think about building a better society together.
They are excited about starting new companies and raising more funds, but they exist these are people who have more money than they will ever be able to spend, and their next goal is to generate even more money — mainly for people who already have more money than they know how to spend.
Meanwhile, 10 percent of our society lives in poverty. This really seems unfair and wrong – and we can do better.
People don't need more than $30 million.
California's proposed billionaire wealth tax does not directly affect me or my family. People may think, “Easy for him to say – raise taxes on others.”
But we need to start a different conversation: How much wealth is enough, how much is too much, and what exactly is financial success?
I believe that if you have $30 million. wealth – congratulations, you won capitalism. If you analyze reasonable investment returns and inflation, you can buy a really nice first home, buy a second home, pay for your kids' college education, provide for end-of-life expenses, and live a very, very luxurious life.
Success in life is largely determined by happiness. Yes, people get educated and work hard, but research shows that the richer people are, the more they attribute their wealth to how good they are and how hard they worked.
I look at single mothers working three jobs, working night shifts – lots of people on less than 190,000. hole. (median household wealth in the US), works very hard.
When you exceed $30 million — and almost no one ever gets to this point — you get to a point where your life is so good that you can't realistically improve it. We should implement a very aggressive 50 percent annual tax on all household wealth over $30 million. Excessive wealth is turned into excessive power through massive campaign donations, which threatens and undermines democracy and capitalism.
A wealth tax is a step in the right direction — but not enough
I'm very happy that we're moving in this direction, but I believe that changes to wealth taxes need to come at the federal level.
When rich people talk about moving out of California, it's a distraction. Suddenly, instead of talking about millions of people losing health care or having to pay much more for it, we're worried about the two hundred really rich people who might move away.
People move all the time. Companies move all the time for all kinds of reasons – it's just part of business. Conversations like this happen all the time, like, “Oh my god, there won't be any more companies in Silicon Valley.” Well, 20 years later – look around. There are still some businesses here; everything is fine.
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It's 18 degrees Celsius and sunny here. Nvidia's CEO recently said they are staying in California because that's where the talent is. We have the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollywood, Tahoe, redwoods, beaches and great weather. I'm really not worried about people not wanting to live in California.
I love this place. My wife and I are thinking about living in different cities for a month, but I have no plans to move anywhere else. As much as I love Colorado – I still have the Denver Broncos logo coasters and will root for my Broncos – I'm from Silicon Valley now and that's where I'm going to stay.
The above text is a translation from American edition of Business Insider
