Michael Hunter

Co-founder Future Secure AI, Inc

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

@GeoffWilsonWAM The startup carve out proposal is not well thought out either. The thresholds just create distortions and reward circumstances (e.g., fitting into the thresholds), not creating an environments for entrepreneurs to take risks

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

This is very sad

[Joe Lonsdale @JTLonsdale]

Very sorry for the loss of our friend, Josh Baer, in the jet crash last night.

Our Austin tech ecosystem is booming in large part due to his early and constant advocacy & enthusiasm.

Josh was building here for years, over a decade before we moved to town. We’d often share notes; I appreciated his perspective and was proud to be a small supporter of his, as he helped so many.

Tayler and I send our thoughts and prayers to his many friends and family.

[Joe Lonsdale @JTLonsdale]

Very sorry for the loss of our friend, Josh Baer, in the jet crash last night.

Our Austin tech ecosystem is booming in large part due to his early and constant advocacy & enthusiasm.

Josh was building here for years, over a decade before we moved to town. We’d often share notes; I appreciated his perspective and was proud to be a small supporter of his, as he helped so many.

Tayler and I send our thoughts and prayers to his many friends and family.

[Morgan Stanley @MorganStanley]

Today, @SpaceX (Nasdaq: SPCX) makes its public market debut with a $75Bn offering (pre-greenshoe) at $135 per share, marking the largest IPO in history.

Congratulations to the SpaceX team. We are honored to serve as joint lead bookrunner and sole stabilization agent.

[Leigh Jasper @leighjasper]

I had hopes they would listen but… no. This is a government, and apparently treasury as well, that does not understand private enterprise, startups, venture capital risk taking and what actually created jobs Australia.
‘Don’t expect big changes’: PM dashes hopes for CGT carve-outs https://t.co/BuBNfAzTon

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

@leighjasper Very concerning

[Tim James MP @timothycjames]

Basically, this Labor Budget will kill initiative, investment and innovation.

Terrible for Australia - and younger Australians even more so.

#auspol

[Geoff Wilson @GeoffWilsonWAM]

The @ausgov plan to double the tax on real returns for the CGT. For clarity we support this change for property.

The problem is applying it to productive assets like ownership of Australian business that will destroy the aspirations of millions of young Australians.

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

@leighjasper This is absolutely correct @leighjasper. We can be global and choose domicile and choose listing locations. The indexation of ‘cost’ doesn’t factor in the blood, sweat and tears either. Hopefully they will think these through before Budget night

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

Proposal to acquire eBay.
https://t.co/FwjcxbDmyt

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

@gearside This is horrible. Such a shame

[The White House @WhiteHouse]

The goal is not just to reach the Moon, but to stay. 🌘

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

@MarkDiStef Qantas, before you do this, please add Wifi to international flights

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

@tlop444 Prison Mike was born for this

[Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin @jasonlk]

My take on California’s “One-Time” Billionaire Tax. It’s much worse than it looks.

📉 Will it pass? Yes, likely.

It only needs 50%+1 voter approval. SEIU + CTA have done this before—Prop 55 won 63% in 2016.

��️ Will it get tied up in litigation?

Almost certainly. Retroactive wealth tax on a tax type CA has never had = due process challenges. Billionaires have the legal budgets for years of fights.

👋 But it’s clearly … only the start. The goal is an annual tax, not one-time. And the target is $25m-50m net worth folks, including illiquid foldings (early stage founders raising a Series B).

The “one-time” framing is strategic, not terminal.

The same coalition (CTA, CFT, SEIU) already has AB 259 written—an >annual< 1% wealth tax at a >$50M threshold<, with plans to go to $25M. It’s been introduced 3 years running.

The one-time tax removes the constitutional barrier. Once that’s gone, the annual version becomes a much easier ballot measure.

🔃 CA Policy Center said: “If SEIU hopes to keep Medi-Cal spending growing, it may need to place repeated wealth taxes on the ballot—potentially lowering the threshold as billionaires flee.”

The real risk for founders:

At $1B, you’re taxing ~200 people. At $50M, you’re taxing 23,000 households—including most successful founders on paper before any liquidity event.

The rational move isn’t to leave when you hit the threshold. It’s to leave—or never incorporate in CA—before you get anywhere close.

✈️ Net net: it will make sense to leave before the Series B.

Vinod Khosla nailed it: “Even people who don’t expect this initiative to pass are still planning to leave because there will be another one.”

The one-time tax is the constitutional Trojan horse. The annual tax — at a much lower threshold — is already waiting inside.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

https://t.co/HMwrlhMV3U

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

Happy NY!

[david friedberg @friedberg]

why not just raise income tax rates?

because your real intent is not to just “provide healthcare”.

you’re masking that you are proposing the creation of, for the first time in the 250 years of this American republic, an organized government seizure of private property from citizens.

you’re calling it a “wealth tax” or a “billionaires tax” or “millionaires tax” or whatever nom du jour polls well. but at the end of the day, it’s the seizure of private property from citizens by the government. citizens that earned money, paid their fair taxes on those earnings (53% if they live in California) and are now being told they need to hand over after-tax assets because the government has failed to provide promised services with the revenue it’s collected, and are now re-casting their own failure to be a socio-economic inequity that must be justly resolved... a slippery slope that has never gone anywhere good (see economic effects in USSR, Cuba, Venezuela, France and Norway wealth tax etc.)

the American founders fled tyranny in Europe and this amazing nation was populated by immigrants (myself and your parents) from around the world not just looking for a “better life” but for a place where they could have freedom from tyrannical governments that can take what they want from private citizens. a great nation borne of property rights, the rule of law, and endowed freedoms to believe, speak, or act. these principles led to the greatest run of innovations, successes, and widespread increase in prosperity, for all citizens, ever seen.

the citizens, the individuals, not the institutions, delivered this progress. those who invented, who toiled, who bled, who sacrificed, who took risk and persevered, who led, and who changed the world, are not charlatans, kleptocrats, or oligarchs. they’re what made us all better off. prosperity is a measure of america’s success, not its failure.

it is your principle that is so offensive, as evidenced by the broad disdain for your flippant flirtation with the darkest of human fantasy - socialism. you and other neo-socialists have led so many of us to reflect on America’s history and what it is becoming. that now leads so many to consider, so unnecessarily, leaving their homes for a place where everyone stands up to shout down the principle you suggest. because if your ideas are now considered moderate, it’s clear this titanic is sinking.

that a “simple tax” of taking assets that have been earned, through toil and tribulation, rightly taxed, and preserved, should now be unjustly seized, is your solution to a problem of obvious government mismanagement and outright fraud, tells us that your true motivation lies not in giving people healthcare but in cutting down success and deleting the system of prosperity and opportunity for all.

i don’t care, and neither should anyone else, what the sum total market value of a private citizens private assets might be. it is none of my business and should be none of yours. because, again, once you open that pandora’s box, we might as well study Lord of the Flies … there is literally nothing stopping 51% of citizens demanding that their government go out and seize 100% of the private property of the 49%.

want to give healthcare to people in need? do your job and fix healthcare. make it affordable. want to be lazy about it? then do your job lazily and raise income taxes.

want to take private property from private citizens who have paid their fair share of taxes and legally earned their property, then honestly declare that it is envy, not inequity, that you strive to resolve…

[Michael Hunter @michaelhunterAU]

RT @chamath: It’s not 1% a year for 5 years.

It’s a one time 5% tax on all assets and it will kill entrepreneurship in California.

Here…